About this page

This page is a transcript for the in-game tutorial steps. Note that the first step for each chapter is the chapter title, so numbering begins at 2.

Tutorial Transcript for Mod Version 0.12.0

Chapter 1, Welcome to Nauvis, you need iron

2: Status report: You need iron

You have survived the landing unharmed but your spaceship is completely wrecked. You will need to build a new rocket from scratch to get back to space. This will require plenty of resources and specialized buildings to process them. But to do any of that, you first need to acquire some iron.

3: Walking around in telestep

You can walk around by pressing "W", "A", "S", "D", with the north direction being "W". When you press a new direction, you will only turn to the new direction on the first press, and you will take steps on the later presses. As you walk, the cursor system will identify the terrain or the entity in front of you. Try it now.

4: Coordinate system

The coordinate system has been established with your crash site at point 0,0. You can check your cursor coordinate by pressing "K". Walking East will increase the X coordinate and walking South will increase the Y coordinate. 1 unit forward means 1 tile forward, which is about 1 meter of distance. Check your coordinates now.

5: Walk among the spaceship wreckage

The main part of your crashed spaceship is just north of point 0,0. The smaller spaceship wreck pieces are mostly to your west around the coordinates of -20, 0. Try to walk over to one of them.

6: Reading entity descriptions

When you find an entity with your cursor, it reports some relevant information about it, such as whether a spaceship wreck piece you found contains any items like much-needed iron plates. You can also press "Y" to read the description for the selected entity.

7: Find a wreck piece

Walk among the spaceship wreck pieces around point -20, 0, until you find one that is reported to contain iron plates, and press "Y" to read its description.

8: Fast item collection

You can quickly empty the output of a selected entity by pressing "CONTROL + LEFTBRACKET". Try this now with a wreck piece.

9: Open player inventory

Items you collect are held in your own inventory, which is represented by rows of slots that can hold items in stacks. Open your inventory now by pressing "E".

10: Inventory navigation

In most menus, you can press "W", "A", "S", "D" to navigate between slots or menu lines. Going over the edge of an inventory will wrap around to the other side. For inventory menus you can also press "K" to check the currently selected slot's position. Now explore the items in your inventory, including the iron plates you might have just picked up and other items you had grabbed while evacuating the ship.

11: Inventory item descriptions

For a selected item stack in the inventory, you can press "Y" to read its description. Some items are buildings and so their description begin by specifying their dimensions when they are placed down. Check the descriptions for the items you have now, and then close the inventory by pressing "E" again.

12: Cursor Mode part 1

There might be more wreck pieces around with iron to salvage. However, it is inefficient to keep navigating around an object to find the others, so it is useful to control the cursor independently while your character stands still. This can be done in Cursor Mode.

13: Cursor Mode part 2

Press "I" to toggle Cursor Mode on or off. In this mode, the cursor moves by one tile every time you press a walking direction key or an arrow key. The detached cursor can move infinitely far away but most cursor based interactions with an entity require for it to be within your reaching distance, which is about 10 tiles.

14: Cursor Mode part 3

Press "J" to return the cursor back to you. Press "K" to read the cursor coordinates as usual, or press "SHIFT + K" to get the cursor's relative distance and direction from you.

15: Use cursor mode to explore

Use cursor mode to further explore the crash site for a minute, and collect any items you find from the wreck pieces by pressing "CONTROL + LEFTBRACKET" as before.

16: Entity scanner tool part 1

While cursor mode makes movement faster, trying to find anything by chance is still not efficient. Therefore you can instead use your entity scanner tool. When you run a scan with it, it creates a snapshot of all the entities around you at that moment and creates an information list about them, including their positions.

17: Entity scanner tool part 2

You can run a scan by pressing "END". This sorts the scan results list by distance from your character's current position. The distances to objects update automatically as you move, but to reorder the list according to a new reference position requires pressing "N". Run a scan now.

18: Entity scanner tool part 3

To navigate the scan results list, press "PAGEUP" and "PAGEDOWN". Press "HOME" to repeat the selected entry. Reading a list entry makes your cursor jump to that entity, and so you can explore around it using Cursor Mode. You can also read its description by pressing "SHIFT + Y". Explore the scan list now.

19: Entity scanner tool part 4

If two entities have the same name and properties, such as two separate water bodies, then they get listed in the same scanner list entry. This ensures that every new scanner list entry is a new kind of entity. To switch between different instances of the same entity, you can press "SHIFT + PAGEUP" or "SHIFT + PAGEDOWN".

20: Explore the spaceship wreck a little more

Test the scanner for a few minutes while you locate more spaceship wreck pieces, if any, and salvage from them.

21: Navigation basics complete

You now have some salvaged iron to use, and the basics of navigation in the world and in inventories have been covered. However, you will need much more iron to do just about anything. Luckily, there appears to be iron ore found in large patches across the surface, and so it is now time for some mining and smelting.

Chapter 2, mining and smelting

2: Scan for iron ore

Run the scanner and go through the scan results to find iron ore.

3: Scan list category filters

To make the scan results less crowded, you can filter it to include only a specific category of entities. Switch your filter categories by pressing "CONTROL + PAGEUP" or "CONTROL + PAGEDOWN". For example, when scanning for iron ore, you can switch to the scanner category of "Resources".

4: Smooth walking mode

While you can go to the iron ore patch using the current Telestep Walking Mode, consider the alternative named Smooth Walking Mode. In this mode, pressing a direction key makes you immediately turn and run towards the relevant direction for as long as you hold down the key. Press "ALT + W" to toggle your walking mode. While smooth walking, you are no longer locked to the coordinate grid and you can also run diagonally. Also in this mode, the cursor does not read the terrain of tiles in front of you. Try this mode now, and switch back when you prefer.

5: Walk over to the iron ore patch

Walk over to the iron ore patch. You can keep pressing "HOME" to keep track of its position as you walk.

6: Mining iron ore

Once you have reached the iron ore patch, you can mine a selected ore tile by holding down "X". It takes some time but the ore slowly builds up in your inventory. Mine 10 units of iron ore.

7: Ore needs to smelted

The ore needs to be smelted in a furnace for it to be usable. You should have a small furnace unit in your inventory, among the emergency equipment you grabbed while evacuating the ship. Press "E" to open your inventory.

8: Grab your furnace

Find the stone furnace in your inventory using the direction keys. You can take it in hand by pressing "LEFTBRACKET" and then press "E" to close the inventory.

9: About items in hand

Your hand is attached to your cursor and it can hold one item stack. You can read what it is holding by pressing "SHIFT + Q", and you can empty your hand into your inventory by pressing "Q". Try now to put away the furnace and then grab it again.

10: Building previews from hand

If the stack in hand contains buildings, you can place one down to build it on the spot. While your hand hovers over a tile, the cursor sometimes reports preview info about trying to place the building there. You can get additional preview info by pressing "K".

11: Build the furnace

With the furnace in hand, walk 4 or 5 tiles into the ore patch and place down the furnace by pressing "LEFTBRACKET". If you want to pick it back up later, you can mine it by holding down "X". Mining it returns the furnace item to your inventory.

12: Building status part 1

The furnace is now on the ground as a 2 by 2 building. You can check the status of any building by pressing "RIGHTBRACKET" on it. Check the furnace status now.

13: Building status part 2

The furnace reports being out of fuel or raw materials. This is predictable right now because we are going to fill it up, but generally it is useful to check the status of a building to understand what is going on with it.

14: Building menus part 1

You can open the menu of a building such as a furnace by pressing "LEFTBRACKET". For most buildings, the menu is divided into multiple sectors, with each sector having its own inventory and its own purpose. You can review the currently opened menu and sector by pressing "SHIFT + E". Now open the furnace menu and check its sector.

15: Building menus part 2

You can switch between sectors using "TAB" and "SHIFT + TAB". Switching to a new sector announces its name and how many slots its inventory has. One of the sectors for every building is the player inventory, available for convenience but with fewer features than usual. You can close the building menu by pressing "E".

16: Add ore to a furnace

To get the furnace working, you will need to add the iron ore and some fuel, as follows: From the furnace's player inventory sector, grab the iron ore stack into hand by pressing "LEFTBRACKET". Then switch to the furnace input sector using "TAB" and deposit the stack in hand by pressing "LEFTBRACKET".

17: Take coal in hand

Now the furnace will need fuel to burn. You have one stack of coal among your emergency supplies, so you can use some of that. Find the coal from your inventory and take it in hand, but then close the menu by pressing "E". The coal will remain in hand.

18: Smart drop the coal part 1

While you can insert all of the coal stack into the furnace, you will need some of it later. Therefore a different technique will be used for inserting it. With no open menus but coal still in hand, find the furnace with the cursor and press "Z" to do a smart drop. This will smart insert only one unit from the stack in hand into the appropriate sector of the selected building.

19: Smart drop the coal part 2

Press "Z" over the furnace about ten more times. The furnace should now be working, which is audible from its crackling sounds. Note that 8 coal units are enough to smelt a full stack of 100 iron plates.

20: Examine the working furnace

Examine the working furnace status and its sectors. Some of the input and fuel should have disappeared into the building while it is working. After some time, the processed output appears at the output sector. Every building continues working without stopping until it runs into an issue, such as missing inputs or full outputs. Furnaces burn fuel efficiently such that one unit of any fuel can be used for multiple smelting cycles, and when a furnace gets interrupted, a partially burned fuel item's remaining energy is stored without being wasted.

21: Collect iron plates

Press "Q" to empty the coal from your hand. Then press "CONTROL + LEFTBRACKET" to collect iron plates from the output sector of the furnace. You will need to mine more iron ore if you want to keep this furnace going, but you can use mining drills to do this for you.

22: Mining drills

You also had a fuel-powered burner mining drill as part of your emergency equipment. You can set up this mining drill in such a way that it directly mines and drops ore into the furnace. This is more easily done in Cursor Mode, which you can enable now by pressing "I"

23: Building in Cursor Mode part 1

Open your inventory with "E" and grab the burner mining drill with "LEFTBRACKET". Close the inventory by pressing "E" again. Because of Cursor Mode, the build preview in hand will move around with the cursor while you stand still.

24: Building in Cursor Mode part 2

The drill in hand is a 2 by 2 building, just like the furnace on the ground. In Cursor Mode, a building is always held by its northwest corner (or its top left corner). This proprty can be used to align buildings, as will be demonstrated now.

25: Building in Cursor Mode part 3

With the drill in hand, move the cursor to the northwest corner of the furnace on the ground. You can check the selected part of the furnace by pressing "K". This info will also report that the drill in hand is 2 by 2, meaning that it should be directly over the furnace when aligned.

26: Building in Cursor Mode part 3

Now press any direction key twice and then press "LEFTBRACKET". This moves the drill by 2 tiles and places it wall to wall with the furnace. Note that the placement area needs to have at least some iron ore beneath it for this to work.

27: Examine the mining drill

Examine the mining drill by opening its menu with "LEFTBRACKET". Note that it does not have any input or output sectors. This is because mining drills collect inputs directly from the ore tiles below them and they eject their outputs directly from their output chutes, which face the same direction as the drills. If there is a container or a furnace in front of the output chute, then the drill fills it up. If nothing is in front of the output chute, then the ore falls to the ground and clogs the output chute.

28: Rotate the mining drill

Based on the mining drill properties explained, the drill placed down earlier needs to be rotated to face the furnace. Select the drill with the cursor and press "R" or "SHIFT + R" to rotate it to the correct direction. For example, if the furnace is located at the west of the drill, then the drill needs to face the west.

29: Refuel the drill

The correctly rotated drill needs to be refuelled. Grab coal from your inventory as before and smart drop about 20 units into the drill by pressing "Z" over it repeatedly. Note that 15 units of coal are needed for every 100 units of ore mined.

30: Now iron is automated

Now that the drill and the furnace are both working, you now have an automatic supply of iron plates. However, you will run out of coal soon and so your next goal will be to start mining more coal to keep your machines running.

Chapter 3, Get coal and get crafting

2: Coal sources

Coal is an ideal fuel source. It is not as energy dense as processed fuels, but it is abundant and can be used as soon as it is mined. Like iron ore, coal can be found in patches and mined by hand or by using drills. It can also be found inside huge rocks that can be found across the surface.

3: About fast travel

Before leaving your machines to go find coal, note that you will need to return to the iron ore patch several times. Therefore it would be good to set up a fast travel point here. You can set up fast travel points as reference points with descriptions, and you are also able to teleport to them using your mini teleporter tool.

4: Create a fast travel point

Open the fast travel menu by pressing "V" and follow the instructions to create a fast travel point near the furnace.

5: Test the fast travel point

Test your fast travel point by walking a few steps away and opening the fast travel menu again with "V", and then selecting the point and pressing "LEFTBRACKET" to travel to it.

6: Locate huge rocks

Now you are ready to search for huge rocks using the scanner tool. To recap on the scanner controls, you run a scan by pressing "END", and navigate the list with "PAGEUP" and "PAGEDOWN", or press "HOME" to reread. You can also switch your filter categories by pressing "CONTROL + PAGEUP" or "CONTROL + PAGEDOWN". Run a scan now.

7: Teleporting

While you can walk to distant objects, the teleporter tool can also be used at any time to teleport to the cursor location by pressing "SHIFT + T". When you combine this feature with the scan list making the cursor jump to indexed entities, it means that you can simply teleport to any entity after finding it with the scanner.

8: Find a huge rock

Walk or teleport to a huge rock. Make sure it is not simply a big rock, because only huge rocks contain coal. If you cannot find any huge rocks, you can mine coal from a coal patch instead.

9: Mine huge rocks

Mine the rock you find by holding "X". Now use the scanner to locate another one and repeat this process until you have at least two stacks each of coal and stone, which means at least 100 units each. If you cannot find more rocks, use the coal or stone patches instead.

10: Return to your iron area

Use the fast travel menu to return to your furnace and miner and collect iron plates from the furnace output sector, using "CONTROL + LEFTBRACKET".

11: Refuel the furnace with coal

Now that you have a fair amount of coal, you can insert larger amounts. Take coal in hand from the inventory and hover it over the furnace like before. This time press "CONTROL + RIGHTBRACKET". This will smart drop half of the stack in hand into the machine, which is 25 coal.

12: Refuel the drill with coal

Read the stack in hand by pressing "SHIFT + Q" and note that the stack has been refilled using other coal stacks from the inventory. This is a feature of smart inserting. Now hover the cursor over the mining drill and drop a whole stack of coal into it by pressing "CONTROL + LEFTBRACKET". And with that, all three types of smart dropping have been covered.

13: First crafting goals

With the fuel top up, you will soon have enough iron to craft many machines. You can begin to craft your first machines now, which will be new furnaces and new mining drills so that coal mining can be automated.

14: Crafting menu part 1

The crafting menu is one of the player menus. You can open this menu by pressing "E" to open the player inventory menu and then pressing "TAB" to switch to the crafting menu. This menu is similar to an inventory, but all its slots contain crafting recipes instead of item stacks.

15: Crafting menu part 2

Crafting recipes are grouped into four item categories. You can switch category by pressing "W" or "S" and you can navigate the recipes within a category by pressing "A" or "D". Navigate to the "production" category and find the stone furnace recipe. The list is alphabetical.

16: Crafting menu part 3

For a selected recipe in the crafting menu, you can read the recipe ingredients and products by pressing "K", or the raw ingredient names using "SHIFT + K", or you can read the product item description by pressing "Y". Check the stone furnace recipe info now.

17: Crafting menu part 4

You can craft 1 set of a selected crafting recipe by pressing "LEFTBRACKET", and you can craft 5 units by pressing "RIGHTBRACKET". Use these keys to craft 8 stone furnaces. The orders get added to your crafting queue while your character works on them.

18: Manual crafting perks part 1

Next in the crafting menu, find burner mining drills within the "production" category. Press "K" to check the ingredients needed.

19: Manual crafting perks part 2

Note that the recipe includes stone furnaces that you already crafted, and iron gear wheels that you do not have. When you order to craft the drill, the crafting queue automatically adds iron gear wheel sets so that it can use them to make drills, and the queue automatically takes existing stone furnaces to save time.

20: Craft 5 burner mining drills.

Craft 5 burner mining drills. You should have 3 stone furnaces left.

21: Self-feeding coal supply part 1

Now that you have extra mining drills, you can use some to mine coal. Head over to the nearest coal patch and walk 5 steps towards the middle.

22: Self-feeding coal supply part 2

Grab your stack of mining drills and press "LEFTBRACKET" to place one down.

23: Self-feeding coal supply part 3

Enable cursor mode and align the cursor with the northwest corner of the drill on the ground.

24: Self-feeding coal supply part 4

Move 2 tiles in any direction and place the second drill. They are now wall to wall with each other.

25: Self-feeding coal supply part 5

Press "Q" to empty your hand. Then use "R" to rotate both mining drills so that they face into each other. This can be confirmed by selecting a drill and noting that it outputs into the other drill.

26: Self-feeding coal supply part 6

Smart drop 1 unit of coal into 1 of the drills and now your self-replenishing coal supply is ready. Both drills mine from the ground and output into each other's fuel slots. You can smart collect a half or full stack from these drills every time you swing by. Just be careful to leave at least 1 coal unit in at least 1 drill so that the system keeps running.

27: Coal supply secured

Set up a fast travel point next to your pair of coal drills. With your iron supply and coal supply secured, you can next move on to acquiring other resources.

Chapter 4, More resources and shortcuts

2: More tutorial controls 1

In the tutorial system, it can help to review older chapters from time to time. To assist with this, you can skip between chapters by pressing "CONTROL + ALT + H" or "SHIFT + ALT + H".

3: More tutorial controls 2

While you can read the summary for a single tutorial step by pressing "ALT + H", you can also toggle summary mode on or off by pressing "CONTROL + SHIFT + H", so that you can browse tutorial steps quickly.

4: Note about pollution

Note that with your drills and furnaces set up, you have now started to pollute the environment. Pollution can be mitigated with the right technologies, but it is necessary for progress. If this is not a peaceful world, some of the locals may react badly to your spreading pollution.

5: Note about combat

If any enemies start attacking you or your buildings, you have your trusty pistol equipped. You can hold "SPACE" to automatically shoot at nearby enemies. You can also press "C" to shoot at anything selected by the cursor.

6: Note about ammo

You only have a few magazines of ammo and no armor at the moment. You can use iron plates to craft more ammo and also some light armor. Better equipment can be unlocked later using military research. Craft 2 firearm magazines now.

7: Equipping items

To equip an item such as a gun or ammo or armor, you first hold it in your hand by picking it up from the inventory by pressing "LEFTBRACKET", and then pressing "SHIFT + LEFTBRACKET" to equip it. However, when your armor or ammo slots are empty, crafted items are inserted into them directly when crafting is completed.

8: Prepare to mine copper part 1

The next resource to automate is copper, which is needed in small amounts at first but becomes as important as iron later on. Use the scanner tool and make your way to the nearest copper patch.

9: Prepare to mine copper part 2

At the copper patch, a mining drill and a furnace will need to be set up and refuelled, as done earlier with the iron ore patch. You can use some shortcuts to speed up this process.

10: About the quickbar

The quickbar is a shortcut system which lets you assign number keys to items in your inventory so that you can instantly grab an item in hand by pressing the number for it. You set up the quickbar shortcut for a selected item by taking it in hand and pressing "CONTROL + NUMBER" for the number key you want from 0 to 9.

11: Set up your first quickbar

A highly recommended quickbar setup for this chapter is to assign coal to number 1, burner mining drills to number 2, and stone furnaces to number 3. This will save you from a lot of searching through your inventory.

12: About quickbar pages

You actually have not 1 but 10 quickbars. You can swap to a different quickbar by pressing "SHIFT + NUMBER" for the number key you want from 0 to 9. It is useful to set up different quickbars for different tasks, which will become more numerous as you unlock new technologies.

13: Set up copper smelting

Using the quickbar, set up a burner mining drill and a furnace so that you can produce copper plates. Smart drop some coal in them both and finally set up a fast travel point here.

14: Next comes wood

With copper sorted, next comes wood. You obtain wood by chopping down trees but the trees cannot be regrown and so there is no simple way to automate this. Luckily you do not need that much wood.

15: Scan for trees

The entity scanner is able to report individual trees and dead trunks within 25 tiles, but it has been optimized to find entire forests instead. Scan for a forest, and make your way to it. You may want to check several forest instances on the scan list using "SHIFT + PAGEUP" and "SHIFT + PAGEDOWN".

16: Area mining

In a forest, you can cut individual trees by mining them with "X". However, you can also use the shortcut for area mining, which is "SHIFT + X". When you run area mining, all trees rocks, dropped items, and other such obstacles within a 10 tile radius get instantly mined. This saves a lot time.

17: Collect more wood

Continue chopping trees until you have one stack of wood, which is 100 units.

18: Using wood

Wood can be used as a low-quality fuel, but it is mainly used for making wooden chests and electric poles. Crafting a few chests now would be useful. Open the crafting menu. For recap, press "E" to open your inventory and then press "TAB" to switch to the crafting tab.

19: Menu search part 1

While you can manually navigate the crafting menu to find the correct recipe, you can also use the menu search system to find a recipe or item quickly. Press "CONTROL + F" to open the menu search box and write in "wood".

20: Menu search part 2

When you have set your search query, you run the search by pressing "SHIFT + ENTER". Each press will jump you to a different matching item, if any are found.

21: Craft wooden chests

Use the search to find the wooden chest recipe and then craft 5 of them. This will cover all the wood requirements for now.

22: Moving on to stone

Next, you can move onto automating your stone supply. Use the scanner and make your way to the nearest stone patch. Stone is useful both in its raw form and its smelted form of stone bricks, and so you will build 2 setups.

23: Start mining stone

Place down a mining drill by itself in the middle of the stone patch and add fuel to it. Note that it drops one unit on the ground and then stops due to its output being full. The stone item on the ground marks where the output is.

24: Stone collection chest

Grab your wooden chest stack and place a chest on top of the stone item on the ground, in front of the miner's output chute. This will make you replace the ground item with the chest, and now the drill will be able to output into the chest.

25: Setup stone brick production

Use quickbar shortcuts to set up a furnace and a burner mining drill like with the iron ore patch. Smart drop some coal in them both and finally set up a fast travel point here.

26: About stone bricks

Stone bricks are used when crafting some buildings, but they are also usable for paving paths on the ground. Take some stone bricks in hand.

27: Paving

When you hold stone bricks in hand, the cursor begins to preview paving the ground. Press "LEFTBRACKET" to pave a stone path over an empty tile, and press "X" with bricks in your hand to remove a paving from a tile. 1 brick paves over 1 tile. Paved ground is faster to run on and it can be used to mark roads for players or vehicles to follow.

28: Larger cursor sizes part 1

If you want to pave over larger areas quickly, you can resize the cursor. This also enables area scanning, which is feature of cursor mode.

29: Larger cursor sizes part 2

Press "SHIFT + I" to increase the cursor size and press "CONTROL + I" to decrease it. If you enabled Cursor Mode, the enlarged cursor box now reports a summary of what is inside its area. If you are holding stone bricks, you can pave the entire area in one key press.

30: Larger cursor sizes part 3

When you have an enlarged cursor, pressing walking direction keys move the cursor by its own size with each press, such that any two neighboring areas scanned this way do not overlap. Alternatively if you want to use a large cursor and move it by only 1 tile, you can do this using arrow keys.

31: Return to the iron patch

With the other resources now covered, the focus returns to increasing iron production. Press "CONTROL + I" until cursor size returns to 1. Then, return to the iron patch fast travel location.

32: Craft more items

Craft 5 burner mining drills and 3 stone furnaces.

33: About the pipette tool

While adding more iron production, the pipette tool shortcut can be used by pressing "Q". This tool works like the quickbar, except it brings to your hand the item selected by the cursor instead of a previously assigned item. For example, if the cursor is selecting a furnace and you have furnaces in your inventory, pressing "Q" will bring a stack of furnaces to your hand.

34: Using the pipette tool, build more iron production

Using the pipette tool instead of the quickbar, build two more furnaces and mining drills each for producing iron plates.

35: Refuel your different areas

Having built quite a few furnaces and mining drills, it is now a good idea to visit your coal patch to grab coal and go to the other patches to refuel your other machines.

36: All resources covered

You now have a fair amount of wood and a steady supply of iron, coal, copper, stone, and stone bricks. You can consider this as your first factory, ready to produce everything you need for building a bigger and better factory. The only major problem right now is that you need to keep running around to resupply coal. This will be addressed next.

Chapter 5, Belts and inserters

2: Why you need belts and inserters

Manually collecting, transporting, and inserting coal for so many machines can become tedious rather quickly. Now that you have a good iron supply, you can build transport belts and burner inserters to handle these tasks for you.

3: Craft machines for the coal supply belt

Using iron plates, craft 15 transport belt units, 15 burner inserters, and 3 chests, all from the logistics category. Also craft 6 burner mining drills, from the production category.

4: Head to the coal patch

Head to your coal patch and stand inside it, at least 2 tiles away from the edges. Like all resource patches, it is roughly circular in shape and denser at the center. You can find its approximate center by counting its height and width. You can count by hand, or you can use cursor skipping.

5: About cursor skipping

Cursor skipping is a cursor mode feature where repeating entities or repeating empty tiles get skipped until the cursor reaches something new. You make the cursor skip along a direction by holding "SHIFT" while you press that direction. This logic can be used to measure the heights and widths of resource patches, which will be demonstrated now.

6: Find the coal patch center point part 1

In Cursor Mode, pick a tile within the coal patch and press "SHIFT + W" to skip to the north. The cursor will skip over repeating coal tiles until it finds something else such as a tree or a rock standing over the coal, or an empty tile at the edge of the coal patch. Skip again if you find a tree or rock, until you find an empty ground tile.

7: Find the coal patch center point part 2

Move the cursor 1 tile south so that it is now at the north edge of the coal patch. Check its coordinates by pressing "K" and save them somewhere, maybe by creating a fast travel point temporarily.

8: Find the coal patch center point part 3

Now to find the south edge of the coal patch, press "SHIFT + S" to skip the cursor south until you find the ground at the south edge. Note down these coordinates.

9: Find the coal patch center point part 4

Find the approximate vertical middle of the coal patch by counting or calculating the distance between the north and south points, and then counting halfway across. Note that typically the starting coal patch is around 20 to 40 tiles in height

10: Find the coal patch center point part 5

From the middle point you found, skip cursor to the east and the west to find those edges, and similarly use their X coordinate values to find the approximate horizontal middle of the patch. Combining the average X and average Y values gives you the approximate center of the patch.

11: Place a transport belt unit in the center of the coal patch

Place a transport belt unit in the center of the coal patch and stand next to it.

12: Rotate the belt unit

Rotate the belt unit towards the direction of the nearest iron ore patch. You can find this direction by running a scan and checking the scan list entry for iron ore and you can rotate the belt by pressing "R". If the ore patch is at a diagonal direction, pick either one of the directions mentioned. The idea is to set up the belt to carry coal towards the iron area.

13: Place belt units

Walk on top of the belt unit and place another unit in the same direction. Repeat this until your belt extends over the edge of the coal patch. With all belt units forming a line, you now have one long belt ready to carry coal for you. The belt does not require fuel or anything else to work, so this part of the system is good to go.

14: About transport belts

All transport belts carry items on top of them in the direction they are facing and they do not need an energy source. Items on top of them can be dropped onto them and can be removed using inserters, and the items never fall off. Therefore items tend to queue up at the end of a belt when they have nowhere to go. The belts have two separate lanes on them and there are ways to mix these lanes, but you can safely ignore the lanes as long as you use only one type of item on the belt, such as a coal-only belt.

15: Prepare to place the first drill

Head to the start of the belt and stand on the starting end. Use Cursor Mode to move 1 tile along the belt's direction. A mining drill will be aligned and placed near this spot.

16: Place the first drill

Move the cursor off the belt by 1 tile and try to place a mining drill there. If the belt is in the way, you need to move 1 more tile away from the belt. If the character is in the way, they will teleport to the edge of the building area.

17: Rotate the first drill

Empty your hand and then rotate the placed drill so that it outputs onto the belt. For example, if the belt is located at the East of the drill, the drill needs to face East. A correctly rotated drill will report that it outputs to the belt.

18: Fuel up the first drill

Drop 10 units of coal into the drill. It should now start dropping newly mined coal onto the belt. If you walk to the stopping end of the belt, you should start to detect coal sitting there, which is what is needed. The coal should fill up the belt lane until the coal queue reaches the drill output and blocks it.

19: Explaining the inserter logic

You now have a drill producing coal and dropping it onto the belt. However, the drill is unable to refuel itself and so a pair of inserters will be placed to take some of the coal from further along the belt and drop it back into the drill to keep it running.

20: Place a chest for reference

Move the cursor to the coal patch tile that is next to the drill and one unit along the belt. Place a chest here. This chest simply functions as a reference point for placing the inserters, and nothing is supposed to interact with it. The chest should be directly next to the drill and also directly next to a belt unit that has coal on it.

21: About burner inserters

An inserter is a machine that can smart collect an item from a building that is directly in front of it and then smart drop the item into a building that is directly behind it. Burner inserters work using fuel, and they can directly use some of the fuel held in their own hands to keep themselves running. In contrast, regular inserters do not need fuel but they need electric power, which will be set up later.

22: Place the first burner inserter

Grab burner inserters in hand, and on the next tile after the chest, along the side of the belt, place a burner inserter. Empty your hand and rotate this inserter to make it face the belt unit next to it. Note that the inserter's direction should be the same as the direction of the mining drill.

23: Place the second burner inserter

Examine the chest. It should have the drill on one side, and the first inserter on the opposite side. On its third side should be the transport belt. One empty side remains. On this side, place the second burner inserter. Rotate this inserter to face the same direction as the transport belt's travel direction.

24: Trace the coal unit path part 1

The setup is now complete. Some coal units will make a loop around the chest and stop. You can trace this loop with your cursor.

25: Trace the coal unit path part 2

In the loop, the coal is first collected from the ground by the mining drill and dropped onto the belt. After travelling two tiles along the belt, the coal is picked up by the first inserter and dropped on the ground. The second inserter picks up the coal from the ground and drops it into the burner mining drill's fuel slot.

26: Inserters do not completely fill buildings

Note that the coal refueling has stopped because inserters usually only partially fill a building's input slots. This is so that most of the items in front of the inserters can move along the belts to buildings that need them more. In this case, the burner inserters will work only while there are less than 5 coal units in the mining drill's fuel slot.

27: Mirror the drill setup part 1

Now this arrangement of a self-refueling drill can be mirrored on the other side of the belt. Empty your hand and enable cursor mode. Then move the cursor to the northwest corner of the drill.

28: Mirror the drill setup part 2

Press "Q" to use the pipette tool. This will bring to hand a mining drill that has the same direction as the one on the ground. Move exactly 3 tiles in this direction so that the cursor is now at the correct spot on the other side of the transport belt.

29: Mirror the drill setup part 3

Press "R" twice to make the drill in hand face the opposite direction and place it down. Do not refuel this drill.

30: Mirror the chest placement

Like before, place a chest next to the drill, one tile along the belt.

31: Mirror the first inserter

Place an inserter after the chest and rotate it to face the belt unit next to it. Note that this should be the opposite direction as the other inserter taking from the same belt unit.

32: Mirror the second inserter

In the remaining empty side of the chest, place the other inserter. Rotate it to face the same direction as the belt's travel direction.

33: Mirrored setup complete

The mirrored drill setup is now complete. Once again you can trace the loop from the drill to the belt to the inserters and back to the drill, but this time looping in the opposite direction. If the loop is correct, the second drill will be refuelled automatically and begin working by itself.

34: Coal belt basics complete

You now have the basic version of a transport belt that carries coal from a pair of self-feeding burner mining drills. However, two drills will not be enough and so this design with two drills needs to be repeated along the belt. Blueprints will be used to do this efficiently.

Chapter 6, Blueprints for copying layouts

2: About blueprints

Now that you have the self-refuelling drills set up on both sides of the belt, you can copy-paste this design along the belt using the blueprint system. Blueprints are planning tools that allow you to copy and paste the layouts of factory areas. First, one side of the belt will be copied.

3: Consider removing the reference chests

Before copying the designs, consider whether to remove the reference chests, by mining them with "X". While these chests do not have a function other than building assistance, you may still prefer to keep them to reduce confusion. It is up to you.

4: Grab a blueprint in hand

Press "ALT + B" to grab a new empty blueprint item in hand for free. You will now begin to define the blueprint selection area. The logic of area selection is to pick the two opposite corners of a rectangle that covers the area. This is first demonstrated by blueprinting one side of the drill setup.

5: Mark the first selection point

Move the cursor to the corner of the burner mining drill that is nearest to the transport belt starting end, and press "LEFTBRACKET" to mark the first corner of the blueprint selection area.

6: Mark the second selection point

Now move the cursor to the coal item on the ground tile in between the two inserters around the same chest. Press "LEFTBRACKET" to mark the second corner of the blueprint selection area. This will create the blueprint.

7: Examine the blueprint

You now have a filled blueprint in hand. Press "RIGHTBRACKET" to open the blueprint menu and explore the menu options to get information about the blueprint.

8: Check the blueprint

Check whether the blueprint has been set up correctly by verifying that it contains 2 burner inserters, 1 burner mining drill, and 1 chest. Also it should have a size of 2 by 4 tiles. If any of this information is incorrect, try the blueprint selection again. You can use one of the menu options for this.

9: Rename the blueprint

Use the blueprint menu to name this blueprint so that it will not get mixed up with future blueprints.

10: Place the blueprint anywhere

With the blueprint in hand and using Cursor Mode, find an empty spot somewhere in the coal patch and try to place down the blueprint by pressing "LEFTBRACKET".

11: Examine the ghosts

Examine the placed objects, which appear in the form of ghosts instead of actual machines. The layout of the ghosts should match the layout of the area you selected for the blueprint. Note that the blueprint layout is always held from the northwest corner while in Cursor Mode.

12: Clear the ghosts

The idea now is to place down the blueprint at a valid position further down the coal transport belt. But first, you can clear the randomly placed ghosts by selecting any of them and pressing "SHIFT + X" to remove it and all other nearby ghosts.

13: Align the blueprint

Take the blueprint in hand again and determine the position where it needs to go along the belt. It should be 4 tiles along the belt from the same position for the original setup.

14: Place and check the blueprint

Place down the blueprint by pressing "LEFTBRACKET" and examine with the cursor whether the ghosts do form the expected coal item loop along the transport belt. If this is wrong, clear the ghosts and try again. If the placement area has no coal on the ground, you may want to extend the start of the belt backward and place the blueprint before the original setup rather than after it.

15: Fill in the ghosts

When the ghosts have been correctly placed, empty your hand. Now, it is easy to fill in the ghosts by using the smart pipette tool by pressing "Q". Using the tool on a ghost automatically moves the cursor to the correct position for building it and assumes its rotation. You can find ghosts quickly using the scanner, which has a category for them.

16: New blueprint for mirrored setup

You should now have two copies of a drill setup on one side of your belt and one copy of the mirrored setup on the other side. Grab a new blueprint in hand by pressing "ALT + B" for copying the mirrored drill setup.

17: Mirrored first selection point

Again, select the drill's nearest corner to the transport belt's starting end and press "LEFTBRACKET" to mark the first corner of the blueprint selection area.

18: Mirrored second selection point

Now move the cursor to the coal item on the ground tile in between the two inserters around the same chest. Press "LEFTBRACKET" to mark the second corner of the blueprint selection area. This will create the blueprint.

19: Check the mirrored blueprint

Check the new blueprint. Again, you should have a blueprint with 2 burner inserters, 1 burner mining drill, and 1 chest. Select again if this is incorrect, and remember to give the blueprint a useful name.

20: Align and place the mirrored blueprint

Align the blueprint to place a copy of the drill setup 4 tiles further along the belt. Remember that every blueprint in Cursor Mode is held from its northwest corner.

21: Fill in the mirrored blueprint ghosts

Fill in the mirrored blueprint ghosts. You should now have a total of 4 self-feeding coal drills that output to the belt.

22: Add more drills to the belt

Use your two blueprints to copy more drill setups along the belt until you have 8 drills in total or you reach the edge of the coal patch. You can also consider extending the belt backwards towards the other edge of the patch so that you can fit more drills along it.

23: Add a chest at the end of the belt

Walk to the stopping end of your coal belt and place a burner inserter that takes from one side of the stopping end unit, but not from its front. Then place a chest behind this inserter. This chest becomes your coal supply chest and you should set up a fast travel point at it. The chest is meant to collect some coal from one side the belt while most of the coal can keep travelling along the belt after it gets extended.

24: The coal supply belt is now ready to use

The coal supply belt is now ready to use. Optionally, you can now extend the coal belt to the iron ore patch and use it to automatically supply the drills and furnaces there. However, it is more efficient to use electric mining drills because they are easier to set up and scale up. Therefore the instructions will continue by moving on to electricity production, which also requires a steady coal supply.

Chapter 7, Water and power

2: Why you need water and power

Electricity is required for powering important factory machines such as research labs, which are needed for developing the technologies that allow you to build advanced systems such as rockets. At the moment, electricity can only be generated using steam power, which requires a steady supply of coal and water. You have coal covered, so the focus now will be water.

3: Craft an offshore pump and pipes

Water can be pumped out of lakes or seas and transported in pipes. To begin, first craft 1 offshore pump and at least 100 pipes. Note that you will now need copper plates.

4: Go to water

Use the scanner tool to locate the nearest water body. Water can be found in lakes similar to ore being found in patches, but the lakes can be a lot larger and they cannot be walked on. Make your way to the shore. Note that the scanner tool always reports the nearest edge of a large body such as a lake.

5: Place the offshore pump

Take the offshore pump from your inventory and press "LEFTBRACKET" to run its special building assistant. The assistant will suggest good positions for placing the pump and the first suggestion is usually the nearest good position. Press "LEFTBRACKET" to confirm this. The offshore pump will set up and will fill up with water instantly. It does not need any energy source so it is ready.

6: Locate the offshore pump

Enable Cursor Mode and use the scanner to locate the pump that has been placed. The pump itself faces into the water body and its output pipe faces the opposite direction.

7: Starting the water pipe

Take a stack of pipes in hand and then bring the cursor to the tile just next to the pump's output. If correct, the pipe preview in Cursor Mode will tell you that the tile connects to water. Press "LEFTBRACKET" to put down a pipe. If it is positioned correctly, the pipe will instantly fill with water.

8: Extend the water pipe part 1

Pipes will automatically connect to any neighboring pipes in any of the four main directions. Based on this, extend the water pipe further out by 2 more tiles.

9: Extend the water pipe part 2

Walk on top of the end of the water pipe and grab a stack of pipes in hand. The goal now will be to extend the pipe until the coal chest. Use the scanner to locate it, from the category for containers.

10: Extend the water pipe part 3

Upon finding the chest from the scan list, the cursor will jump to it. You can then check the distance you will need to build towards the cursor by pressing "ALT + K". You can also press "HOME" to reread the scan entry to check the relative distance and direction of the chest.

11: Extend the water pipe part 4

You will need to walk from your position to the chest position while placing pipe units along the way. If the direction to the chest is diagonal, you may want to draw a large "L" shape by first covering the vertical distance and then the horizontal distance, or vice versa. Walking and building at the same time can be done more easily using Build Lock Mode.

12: Extend the water pipe part 5

Press "CONTROL + B" to toggle Build Lock Mode. This is an alternative fast building system that places objects behind you as you walk forward. Therefore you can now just use the direction keys to walk and place while you use the "HOME" key to guide you until you are about 15 tiles away from the chest.

13: Extend the water pipe part 6

Keep walking until you are about 15 tiles away from the chest. If you encounter obstacles along the way, you can turn off Build Lock as you examine how to navigate around obstacles like cliffs, or try to mine obstacles like trees or rocks.

14: Select an area for steam power

Now that you have water and coal supplied to the same area, you can start building the steam power system there. First you will need to identify an empty space that is about 15 by 15 tiles in size. You can use the scanner for this. First, walk to the end of the water pipe.

15: Finding empty spaces with the entity scanner

Run a new scan. Press "N" to ensure that you sort results by distance and press "CONTROL + PAGEUP" until you reach the "ALL" category. Now go down the scan list. Since objects are sorted by distance, if there is nothing within 15 tiles, other than the water pipe, that means that you have 15 tiles of empty space in every direction. You can consider this as an empty circle around you.

16: Finding empty spaces with area scanning

Another option for finding empty spaces is area scanning with the large cursor. You can press "SHIFT + I" and "CONTROL + I" to resize your cursor, and in Cursor Mode this will scan everything within the cursor area. You can move the large cursor one tile at a time using arrow keys until you find an empty area and then note its coordinates.

17: Crafting steam power machines

When you have found a good spot, you can craft the buildings needed for steam power. Craft 1 boiler and 2 steam engines using iron plates and stone.

18: About boilers

First you will place the boiler. This building is 3 tiles by 2 tiles in size. Its front side is 3 tiles wide and it has its steam output pipe on its front center, facing the same direction as the building itself. The building has a water input pipe on both of its short sides, closer to the back. The water inputs are actually connected to each other such that water can pass through the boiler's back pipe if its own tank is already full.

19: Place the boiler

Take the boiler in hand and enable Cursor Mode. Place it down somewhere near the end of the water pipe so that you can precisely align it later by nudging.

20: Nudging buildings

To align buildings that you already placed down, you can nudge them by one tile at a time. This is done by pressing "CONTROL + SHIFT + DIRECTION KEY", where the direction key is "W" or "A" or "S" or "D". A nudged building can only be nudged into an empty spot. You can use this feature to make sure that the boiler is aligned correctly.

21: Rotating non-square buildings

Note: A building that has been placed down cannot change its footprint. Therefore rectangular buildings such as boilers can only be rotated 180 degrees when they have already been placed. This restriction does not apply to square buildings on the ground such as mining drills, and to all building previews held in hand before being placed.

22: Align the boiler

Nudge the boiler to get its back pipe aligned with the end of the water pipe. Having the boiler back pipes in a straight line makes it much easier to extend the steam system. The connected boiler will fill with water, and you can check the building to verify this.

23: Fuel the boiler

Place some coal in the aligned boiler to hear it start working. Check it to verify that it now has steam in it.

24: About the steam engine

The steam engine will be placed next. It is a long building that is 3 by 5 tiles, with a main steam pipe running down its middle. Both of its short sides have steam pipe connections at their middles, such that steam can pass through the building when its own tank is full. Using this property, it is usually practical to connect steam engines end to end with each other and with boilers.

25: Placing the steam engine part 1

To precisely place the steam engine, first make sure that the area in front of the boiler has no obstacles, including your character. Then take the steam engine in hand and enable Cursor Mode. As always, the building in hand is held from its top left corner while in Cursor Mode.

26: Placing the steam engine part 2

The steam engine needs to be aligned such that one of its short sides connects with the boiler's front side. The steam engine can face the same direction or opposite direction as the boiler but its positioning also depends on the boiler's direction. When you press "K" to check the preview position, this also reports how far the previewed building in hand extends to the East and the South.

27: Placing the steam engine part 3

You can figure out the alignment by starting at the boiler's output and counting tiles. Alternatively, you can place the steam engine 7 tiles away from the boiler's output and try to nudge it until it aligns correctly. As a third option, you can use the steam engine snapping tool.

28: Placing the steam engine part 4

The steam engine snapping tool can be activated by pressing "CONTROL + LEFTBRACKET" with a steam engine in hand. It finds a nearby boiler with an empty space in front of it, and tries to place a correctly positioned and rotated steam engine for you. Try the other placement methods before trying to use this tool.

29: Placing the steam engine part 5

If the steam engine alignment is correct, it will fill up with steam from the boiler, and you can check the machine to verify this. At this point, you have completed a basic steam power system.

30: Placing the second steam engine

One boiler is fast enough to supply two steam engines, so you can place your second steam engine directly at the other end of the first one. Use counting or nudging techniques to do this, while the snapping tool cannot be used here.

31: About electric networks

Now that your boilers and engines are set up, you can set up your first electric network using electric poles and test it using a small load.

32: About electric poles

An electric pole is able to collect and distribute electric power for all machines within its own supply area. It also automatically connects to other electric poles within reach using overhead wires. Small electric poles are available from the start, with a supply radius of 2 tiles and a wire reach of 7.5 tiles.

33: Craft small electric poles

Craft 5 pairs of small electric poles using copper and wood. Each recipe set produces 1 pair.

34: Placing the first electric poles, part 1

For the steam engine connected to the boiler, use Cursor Mode to find the two corners of the building that are closer to the boiler, and place a small electric pole next to both of these corners.

35: Placing the first electric poles, part 2

For the second steam engine, again find the two corners of the building that are closer to the boiler, and place a small electric pole next to both of these corners.

36: Placing the first electric poles, part 3

Place one small electric pole on one of the three tiles behind the boiler.

37: Craft the test inserter

As your test load, craft an inserter using iron and copper. Note that it needs to be not a burner inserter but a regular electric inserter.

38: Place the test inserter

Place the test inserter also on one of the three tiles behind the boiler. It should be within 2 tiles of the nearby electric pole. If everything is set up correctly, you should now hear the steam engines hiss as they work at very low speed.

39: Examine your electric network

You now have your first electric network running. For info about an electric network, you can select any electric pole and also check its status by pressing "RIGHTBRACKET". Like with furnaces consuming fuel only as much as needed, steam engines consume steam only as much as needed, so the test load of one idle inserter will have minimal effect.

40: Place a boiler coal input chest

Craft a chest and place it next to the inserter so that the inserter is between the chest and the boiler. Then rotate the inserter to take from the chest and place into the boiler. This chest becomes a boiler coal input chest.

41: Connecting the coal chests, part 1

While you can carry coal from your supply chest to your boiler input chest, it would be better to supply the coal automatically using burner inserters and transport belts.

42: Connecting the coal chests, part 2

Craft 2 burner inserters and 25 transport belts. Place the first belt unit next to the coal supply chest with exactly 1 tile of space in between them. Then rotate it to make it face towards the boiler input chest.

43: Connecting the coal chests, part 3

Extend the new belt until its stopping end is next to the boiler supply chest, with exactly 1 tile of space in between. This should require about 15 to 25 belt units in total. You may need to make the belt turn along the way. A belt corner forms automatically when you rotate the unit at the stopping end of a belt.

44: Connecting the coal chests, part 4

Fill the gap near the starting end of your new transport belt with a burner inserter that takes from the coal supply chest and places onto the belt. Similarly, fill the gap near the stopping end of your new belt with a burner inserter that takes from the transport belt and places into the boiler input chest.

45: Lock chest slots

You should now have the two chests connected such that the coal supply chest is slowly being drained towards the boiler input chest. While having some coal in both chests is important, perhaps you do not want to use the full capacities of both chests. You can use chest slot locking to assist here.

46: Chest inventory slot locking

For an open chest inventory, press "PAGEDOWN" to decrease the number of unlocked slots by 1, starting from the end of the chest inventory. You can also press "SHIFT + PAGEDOWN" to decrease it by 5 or "CONTROL + PAGEDOWN" to decrease it by 100 or down to 0. Alternatively, you can press "PAGEUP" or its modified versions to increase the number of unlocked slots.

47: Power supply done

You now have a reliable steam power system that is automatically supplied with water and coal. You are finally ready to start using research labs so that you can research and set up more advanced buildings and systems on your way to building a rocket.

Chapter 8, Research and automation

2: Quickbar recommendation

Note that transport belts, inserters, and electric poles will become regularly used equipment from now on. Therefore it may be useful to add these items to your quickbar slots.

3: About research

The research system is the key to progression towards building rockets. Research is conducted by setting up research labs, supplying them with electricity and testing equipment in the form of science packs, and then selecting technologies for the labs to research over time.

4: Craft and place 1 research lab

Craft 1 research lab and place it near your steam engines, on the edge of the area that is closer to the iron ore patch.

5: Bring electricity to the lab

Grab electric poles in hand and walk from the steam engines towards the lab. As you walk in Telestep Mode, the electric pole preview will tell you whether it connects to nearby electric poles. Use this information to place spaced out electric poles from the steam engines until the lab.

6: About research packs

Open the lab by pressing "LEFTBRACKET" on it, and examine its slots. As revealed here, a lab can support several types of science packs. Basic research requires only one type of science pack, while others become needed as technologies become more advanced.

7: Craft automation science packs

Open your crafting menu and craft 10 automation science packs. You will need copper plates and iron gear wheels for this.

8: Smart insert science packs

Insert the science packs into the lab. It now has equipment and power, but it will not start working immediately because you need to select a technology to research.

9: Open the technology menu

Open the technology menu by pressing "E" to open the inventory and pressing "TAB" multiple times. This menu is navigated using direction keys. Press "A" and "D" to navigate between technologies in the same category. Press "W" and "S" to change category. The three technology categories are: already researched, available now for research, or not yet available for research.

10: Find the technology for "Automation"

Find the technology named "Automation", which is essential for getting your factory running. Press "Y" to read about it.

11: Select the technology for "Automation"

Press "K" to read the science pack requirements and unlock effects for this technology. Then press "LEFTBRACKET" to start researching it. You should hear the electricity crackle as a lab begins to work. Otherwise, check the status of your lab to troubleshoot it.

12: About research progress

You can check current research progress, as well as the planet's local time, by pressing "T". Research progress is permanent such that you can interrupt one research to start another and then return to the first one without issues. When the research is complete, you hear a musical notification about it.

13: About assembling machines part 1

Researching "Automation" has unlocked the recipe for assembling machines, which are at the heart of Factorio, because they automate crafting for you. Building a bigger factory requires crafting a lot of parts and the machines to make those parts. Therefore automated large-scale crafting with several assembling machines is the solution for getting everything done within reasonable time.

14: About assembling machines part 2

Assembling machines are large electric powered crafting machines. They are accessed using inserters and they craft the same recipe repeatedly as long as they have the space and ingredients and power to keep on working. Note that recipe ingredients for assembling machines must be supplied exactly because unlike your character, they are unable to craft the ingredients themselves out of raw materials.

15: Craft and place the first assembling machine

Craft 1 assembling machine and place it down next to the research lab with 1 tile of space in between them. Place an electric pole next to it if needed. Next you will need to set its crafting recipe.

16: Set up the first assembling machine part 1

Open the assembling machine menu, which will open the recipe selection sector of this building. Enter the recipe selection by pressing "LEFTBRACKET" and find the recipe for the automation science pack. You can use menu search here if you wish. To recap, open the menu search box using "CONTROL + F", and then enter the search term, and run then search by pressing "SHIFT + ENTER".

17: Set up the first assembling machine part 2

Confirm the selected recipe by pressing "LEFTBRACKET" and close the machine menu.

18: Grab copper and iron plates

Now to prepare ingredients for the machine, grab a stack each of copper plates and iron plates and craft 10 iron gear wheels.

19: Explore the assembling machine menu

Open the assembling machine menu again and use "TAB" to explore its sectors. Note that this machine has input slots and output slots reserved for specific items based on its selected recipe.

20: Smart insert ingredients

Switch over to the player inventory tab of the machine menu. You can smart transfer items between this menu and the building. Simply select an item slot and press "SHIFT + LEFTBRACKET" to smart transfer its item stack, if it is allowed. You can also press "CONTROL + LEFTBRACKET" to smart transfer all allowed stacks for this item, or you can even press "CONTROL + LEFTBRACKET" on an empty slot in order to smart transfer every allowed item from the entire inventory.

21: The assembling machine is working

With its electricity and copper plates and iron gear wheels all supplied, the assembling machine should now be working. A tier 1 assembling machine crafts half as fast as you do, but you can build several of them in a row so that the row in total crafts way faster than you do.

22: Chain of assembling machines part 1

Now to demonstrate chains of assembling machines, craft a second assembler and 2 inserters.

23: Chain of assembling machines part 2

Place the second assembling machine next to the first machine with 1 tile of space in between. Set its recipe to iron gear wheels.

24: Chain of assembling machines part 3

Now place an inserter in between the two assembling machines such that it moves iron gear wheels from the second machine to the first machine. Place an electric pole next to it if needed.

25: Chain of assembling machines part 4

Place the other inserter in between the first assembling machine and the lab. Place an electric pole next to it if needed.

26: Automation demo complete

You now have a small factory that takes in metal plates and produces science! If you add an automatic furnace system to it you can completely automate science production from mine to lab. This will be the next focus, but also with a larger scale in mind.

Chapter 9, Mass produce iron using belts

2: Resupply your machines

Before continuing, resupply coal to all your machines, and drop 50 iron or copper plates into each of your assemblers.

3: Research "Logistics"

Open the technology menu and select "Logistics" as the next technology to research. This will unlock machines that allow you to do more with transport belts, such as splitting and balancing them, or moving parts of them underground.

4: About scaling up iron production

The focus now will be to scale up iron production by switching to rows of electric mining drills that supply rows of stone furnaces.

5: About electric mining drills

Electric mining drills are better than burner mining drills because they are twice as fast, they mine a wider area that includes the tiles immediately around them, they are more energy efficient, they pollute less, and supplying their energy with electric poles is much easier than setting up coal belts. On the other hand, they are vulnerable to power outages, and so it is recommended to keep some burner mining drills around just in case, especially for producing coal.

6: Craft iron mine supplies

Craft 6 electric mining drills and 50 transport belts and 10 pairs of small electric poles.

7: Get in position

Walk to the center of your iron ore patch. You can use cursor skipping as before. If your existing iron furnaces are in the way, find another 10 by 10 empty area of the ore patch.

8: Build the iron ore belt

Use large cursor area scanning to determine which side of the iron ore patch has the most empty space, such as a 30 by 30 empty area. Build a transport belt that starts from the middle of the iron patch and extends until the edge of this empty space.

9: Place electric mining drills

Place 3 electric mining drills along each of both sides of this belt and rotate them to make them output onto the belt. The drills can be placed wall to wall, but it is better to leave 2 tiles of space in between every two drills to maximize the area coverage.

10: Place electric poles

Place a small electric poles in the gaps between the drills and then connect this electric grid with your main electric grid by placing more poles in between them. When electricity is collected, the belt should fill up with iron ore.

11: Bring power to the furnace area

With the ore belt ready, now the furnace row can be set up. Extend your electric network from your mine up until the end of your iron ore belt.

12: Craft for the furnace area

For the furnace area, you will need 60 transport belts, 11 inserters, 10 small electric poles, 5 stone furnaces, 5 long handed inserters, and 1 chest. Craft the missing items now.

13: Extend the iron ore belt into the building area

Extend the iron ore belt into the building area by 20 tiles.

14: Place the stone furnaces along the iron ore belt

Place 5 stone furnaces along the iron ore belt, but with 1 tile of space between every furnace and the belt, and 1 tile of space between every 2 furnaces. This can be done more easily using Cursor Mode.

15: Note about furnace fronts and backs

For the purpose of clarity, from now on the parts of the furnaces that face the ore belt can be considered as their front sides, even though these buildings do not actually support direction.

16: Create the iron plate output belt

Along the back of the furnaces, leave 1 tile of space and then create a new transport belt parallel to the ore belt and with a length of 20 tiles. This will be the iron plate collection belt.

17: Place furnace row main inserters

For each furnace, place a first inserter that takes from the ore belt and puts into the furnace, and then a second inserter that takes from the furnace and puts onto the new iron plate belt.

18: Place an iron output chest

At the end of the iron plate belt, place and inserter that collects from the side of the belt and place a chest and an electric pole behind it. This is the new iron plate collection chest. Consider setting up a fast travel point here.

19: Place furnace row electric poles

In the gap between every two furnaces, place a small electric pole. These poles are able to reach inserters on both sides of the furnaces. Make sure that the furnace row is connected to your main electric grid.

20: Create the coal input belt

Create a third transport belt directly next to the ore belt. It should be face the same direction and be 20 tiles long as well. This will be the furnace coal supply belt.

21: Place furnace row fuel inserters

In order to supply the furnaces from the coal supply belt, for each furnace place a long handed inserter next to the iron ore inserter and facing the same direction. The long handed inserter takes from the coal belt 1 tile away and place into the back part of the furnace that is also 1 tile away. Note that the part of a machine does not matter for inserters that interface with it.

22: Prepare to connect the coal belt

The furnace row is now ready to go, except for its coal belt being connected. The goal now will be to extend the coal supply belt and connect it to furnace area. Set up a fast travel point at the start of the furnace row, and then head to your coal supply chest.

23: Craft transport belts

From the coal supply chest, select the fast travel point for the furnace row and close the menu. Then press "ALT + K" to determine the distance to the furnace row. Craft a large number of transport belts accordingly. Also craft 2 pairs of underground belts.

24: Connect the coal belts

Use the scanner tool and Build Lock Mode to extend the coal belt, similar to how the water pipe has been extended. If you encounter buildings along the way, you can wrap the coal belt around it, or you can use underground belts so that belts can pass under obstacles.

25: About underground belts part 1

The underground belt item is actually the entrance chute for an underground belt segment. Rotate this item in hand to face the same direction as the belt on the ground and place it down to create the entrance chute.

26: About underground belts part 2

Then you can place another underground belt chute up to 4 tiles away. The chute needs to face the same direction as the entrance chute, and the cursor preview will read whether it is connected. When you place a connected chute, the underground belt segment is created automatically between the two chutes and for free. The underground segment does not interact with anything including any other underground belt segments.

27: Iron production complete

When your coal belt has been connected, you will have a large automatic iron plate supply ready to go and you will be prepared to build bigger systems. For example, your mining belt and furnace row can be extended in order to increase their production capacity.

28: Drill to furnace ratio

For iron and copper, the ratio of electric mining drills to stone furnaces is 5 to 8, or approximately 2 drills for every 3 stone furnaces. Therefore consider to match the capacity of your 6 electric mining drills by extending your furnace row to 9 furnaces.

29: Mass iron production complete

You now have a large automatic iron supply, which will make it much easier to further scale up production.

30: Invest in military tech

Now is a good time to research "Military 1" technology so that you have better weapons. Craft some light armor while waiting for the research to finish. To recap, you normally equip an item by taking it in hand and then pressing "SHIFT + LEFTBRACKET", but the light armor will be equipped automatically when crafting finishes because your armor slot was already empty.

31: Craft and equip a submachine gun

After military research is completed, craft a submachine gun. It may be automatically equipped if any of your three gun slots are empty and it will have no ammo at the start. You can manage your guns in detail from the player inventory. Press "R" to read the equipped guns summary, or press "SHIFT + R" to reload all guns with ammo from the inventory, or press "CONTROL + SHIFT + R" to unequip all guns and ammo.

32: More gun related controls

To recap, you can press "SPACE" to shoot nearby enemies within range, or press "C" to shoot at the cursor. If you have multiple loaded weapons equipped, press "TAB" to switch between them when no menus are open.

33: Setup a magazine assembler

You might also want to set up an assembling machine that takes from your iron plate belt and produces firearm magazines for you.

34: Setup the output chest

Place an inserter and output chest for collecting firearm magazines from the assembling machine. You can use the chest slot locking feature to limit the number of unlocked output chest slots to 1, so that the machine can produce only one stack of firearm magazines at a time.

35: Chest inventory slot locking

For an open chest inventory, press "PAGEDOWN" to decrease the number of unlocked slots by 1, starting from the end of the chest inventory. You can also press "SHIFT + PAGEDOWN" to decrease it by 5 or "CONTROL + PAGEDOWN" to decrease it by 100 or down to 0. Alternatively, you can press "PAGEUP" or its modified versions to increase the number of unlocked slots.

36: Research gun turrets

It is also useful to research "gun turret" technology so that you can craft and place turrets to protect your factory areas for you. This is important to do in a non-peaceful world because the increase in mining and smelting activity might attract more enemies.

37: Ready to scale up other resources

Now that you have better defensive equipment thanks to your large iron supply, you can move on to scaling up the production for other resources.

Chapter 10, Mass produce other resources and use splitters

2: Copper processing goal

The next goal will be to automate copper production. It is a good aim to set up 6 mining drills and 9 furnaces again. This will be mostly similar to setting up the iron furnace row.

3: Copper processing building list

To set up the copper mining and smelting, you will need approximately 100 transport belts, 30 small electric poles, 20 inserters, 9 long handed inserters, 9 stone furnaces, 6 electric mining drills, and 1 chest. Craft the missing items now.

4: Copper ore belt part 1

To set up your copper ore belt, go to the middle of your copper ore patch and use large cursor area scanning to find an empty area of 30 by 30 tiles nearby, and then build a transport belt from the middle of the patch to the edge of this area.

5: Copper ore belt part 2

Place 3 electric mining drills on either side of the belt with 2 tile gaps between neighbors and place small electric poles in these gaps. Note that if there are multiple resource types within coverage of a mining drill, it will output multiple ore types over time, so be sure to avoid such overlaps.

6: Copper ore belt part 3

Place additional electric poles to connect this mine with your main power grid and then extend the grid to the furnace area.

7: Copper furnace row part 1

Extend the copper ore belt into the empty area by 30 tiles. Build 30 tiles of the coal belt right next to it as well.

8: Copper furnace row part 2

Leave 1 tile of space on the other side of the ore belt and then place a row of 9 stone furnaces with 1 tiles of space between each.

9: Copper furnace row part 3

Then leave 1 tile of space on the other side of the furnaces and then place 30 tiles of the copper plate collection belt.

10: Copper furnace row part 4

Place inserters and long handed inserters to interface the furnaces and belts.

11: Copper furnace row part 5

Place a small electric pole between every 2 furnaces and then connect them to the main electric network.

12: Copper furnace row part 6

Place the copper plate collection chest at the end of the row and consider setting up a fast travel point there.

13: Items for splitting the coal belt

Now the copper furnaces are all set up except for connecting the coal supply belt. Craft 100 transport belts and 2 splitters.

14: Find the coal belt splitting point part 1

Head over to your coal supply chest and use the scanner to find the direction of the copper furnaces.

15: Find the coal belt splitting point part 2

Follow your coal supply belt as long as it takes you closer to your copper furnaces. At one point it will make sense to split the supply belt and make the new branch head directly towards your copper furnaces while the rest of the belt continues as usual to the iron furnaces. Find this point. It may be right next to the coal supply chest or perhaps most of the way along the belt.

16: Grab a splitter in hand

At your chosen splitting point along the coal belt, grab a splitter in hand and rotate it to face the same direction as the belt unit on the ground.

17: About splitters

A splitter is a transport belt system machine that is two tiles wide and 1 tile long. It can input two belts from its wide back and output two belts from its wide front, and its narrow sides have no belt access. The splitter works by taking items from its input belts at equal speed and distributing them to its output belts at equal speed. Therefore you can take one or two input belts and split their contents equally between two output belts.

18: Place the splitter

Place down the splitter directly on top of belt unit to replace it. This will make the coal belt cover the left input and output of the splitter, and you are able branch off to the right, all with respect to the forward direction of the belt. If you prefer to split the other way, you need to mine the splitter and place it with one tile of offset to the left. Nudging does not work for belts and splitters due to a system limitation.

19: Extend the coal belt

Place a belt unit in front of the empty output of the splitter to start your new coal supply belt branch. Extend this belt until it reaches your copper smelting area. While building your new belt, your path might require crossing over obstacles such as another transport belt. This is where you can use underground belts, as before.

20: Recap about underground belts part 1

Recap: The underground belt item is actually the entrance chute for an underground belt segment. You rotate the item to face the same direction as the belt on the ground and place it down to create the entrance chute.

21: Recap about underground belts part 2

Recap: You can place another underground belt chute up to 4 tiles away. The chute needs to face the same direction as the entrance chute, and the preview will read whether it is connected. When you place a connected chute, the underground belt segment is created automatically between the two chutes and for free. The underground segment does not interact with anything including any other underground belt segments.

22: Return to the coal supply chest

After connecting your coal belts, return to the coal supply chest.

23: Adding a coal belt splitter for the boilers part 1

The coal supply chest current has a burner inserter that supplies another transport belt for your boiler. While using inserters like this is another way to split a belt, it is limited by the speed of the inserter, which may become an issue when you extend your boiler area. Therefore using a splitter instead would be useful here.

24: Adding a coal belt splitter for the boilers part 2

Find a spot near the coal supply chest, along the coal supply belt, to place a splitter. Place a few more belt units to connect the splitter branch to the coal belt for the boilers. This will make sure that boilers can receive enough coal over time.

25: Extend your coal mining

Now that you are using a significant amount of coal for furnaces and electricity, you may need to increase your coal mining by adding a handful of electric mining drills to the belt. It is a good idea to also keep your burner mining drills for the coal supply because if power runs out, you would still be able to produce coal for maintaining the boilers.

26: Upgrading the stone setup

With your iron and copper and coal supplies upgraded, the remaining resource setup to upgrade is stone. The same smelting setup is used as that for iron and copper. Therefore it would be easy to just copy-paste the setup layouts using blueprints.

27: Blueprint the iron smelting area part 1

Go to your iron smelting are and press "ALT + B" to grab a new empty blueprint.

28: Blueprint the iron smelting area part 2

Select the iron plate collection chest as the first point of the blueprint selection area, using "LEFTBRACKET".

29: Blueprint the iron smelting area part 3

For the second selection point, select the point where the coal supply belt enters the area. The rest of the buildings should all be located between these two points.

30: Examine the blueprint

To examine the blueprint you just created, press "RIGHTBRACKET" to open its menu. Consider renaming it to something like "stone furnace row" and note its dimensions.

31: Get supplies

Before placing the blueprint for the new area, you will need approximately 100 transport belts, 30 small electric poles, 20 inserters, 9 long handed inserters, 9 stone furnaces, 6 electric mining drills, and 1 chest. Craft any missing items now.

32: Find a stone smelting area

Go to your stone patch and find or clear out an empty area where the blueprint would fit.

33: Place the blueprint and fill it in

Use Cursor Mode to paste the blueprint. Then you can quickly fill it in by using the ghosts for reference, and by using the pipette tool on ghosts, by pressing "Q".

34: Setup the stone mines

Setup your stone mining belt like with the ore belts. You can use blueprints or free building.

35: Connecting the coal belt

When it comes to connecting the coal supply belt to the stone smelting area, you can leave this for later if you like because you will not need a lot of stone bricks for now. As a temporary alternative, you can place a chest and inserter at the start of the coal belt for these furnaces, and drop coal manually in the chest for now. The chest would feed the belt which would feed the furnaces.

36: Place a raw stone collection chest

Raw stone is something you need sometimes as well. Therefore you can place a raw stone collection chest at the start of your furnace area, next to the coal drop off chest.

37: Now to focus on assembling

Now you have upgraded all of your resource supplies. You are ready to build the assembly area to start mass producing science packs and other products.

Chapter 11, Automating automation science at scale

2: Craft needed items

To build the next areas, it would be good to have at least 100 transport belts, 25 small electric poles, 20 inserters, 20 long handed inserters, 6 assembling machines, 5 labs, and 1 chest. Pick up your existing lab and assembling machines if you want, and craft any missing items now.

3: Find an empty space

Next, you need to find a 50 by 50 space that is close enough to everything you have built so far. In this area you will be building a row of assembling machines that take metal plates and produce automation science packs without any hand crafting needed. A large empty area is recommended because you can then build more factory areas around this row.

4: Bring metal plates to the assembly area

Extend your iron plate belt and your copper plate belt to reach the new assembly area. Use underground belts if needed. The belt stopping ends need to be side by side at the edge of the area.

5: Extend your metal plate belts

To begin building the area, extend your two metal plate belts directly side by side across the middle of the area. Machines placed around these belts will collect from them.

6: Place a row of assembling machines

Place 6 assemblers along the pair of belts, with a 1 tile gap between the machines and the nearest belt, and 1 tile of gap between every two machines. Note that for clarity, it is assumed that the front of each assembling machine faces the pair of metal plate belts, even though these machines do not actually support direction.

7: Place the 3rd belt

Leave 2 tiles of space behind the row of assembling machines and create a new, third belt running along the length of the row. This is the output belt, which will carry iron gear wheels in one lane and automation science packs in the other lane.

8: Configure the first assembling machine

Configure the first assembling machine in your row to make iron gear wheels. This machine will be fast enough by itself to supply up to 10 assembling machines making automation science packs, but 5 machines are enough for now.

9: Configure the second assembling machine

Configure the second assembling machine to produce automation science packs.

10: Copy pasting entity settings

Next, you can use the entity settings copy-paste shortcut to configure the other machines to produce science packs as well. Press "SHIFT + RIGHTBRACKET" to copy settings from a selected machine and then press "SHIFT + LEFTBRACKET" to paste the settings on a different selected machine.

11: Place electric poles between the assemblers

Now, electric poles need to be placed around the assembling machines. For every gap between two assembling machines place 2 small electric poles such that they are at the opposite ends of the gap, directly next to the transport belts. This will ensure that every tiles around every assembling machine has electric pole coverage.

12: Place electric poles at the corners of the row

Also place electric poles at the outer corners of the assembling machines at the 2 ends of the row. The total number of placed electric poles should now be 14. Make sure to connect the machine row to your main electric network.

13: Place iron plate inserters

Head to the iron gear wheel assembler and place 2 inserters so that both take iron plates from the belt and drop into the assembler. You need 2 inserters for this because 1 is often not fast enough for this recipe until you unlock some upgrades. The inserters will need to be regular or long handed depending on whether the iron belt is the close one or the far one.

14: Place copper plate inserters

For the other 5 assembling machines place 1 inserter or long handed inserter each so that every machine is able to take copper plates from the correct belt. 1 input inserter each is fast enough for this recipe.

15: Place long handed inserters behind science pack assemblers

Next, behind each of all 5 science pack assembling machines, place one long hand inserter that takes from the output belt and also one long handed inserter that places onto the output belt.

16: About the output belt lanes

The input long handed inserters will take iron gear wheels from the nearer belt lane and the output long handed inserters will drop the finished automation science packs onto the further belt lane. The lanes do not mix up. This is made possible due to a number of behavioral rules for inserters and belts, which will now be explained.

17: Input inserter rules

As a rule, the input inserters can take from either lane of a transport belt, but they are automatically programmed to take only the items that are accepted by the assembling machines that these inserters drop into, which in this case are copper plates or iron gear wheels. The input inserters also do not take more than a few units of the input items at a time so that most of the items remain on the belt and can be distributed to other machines.

18: Output inserter rules

The output inserters use the universal rule that an inserter can only place down an item onto the further lane of a transport belt. This ensures that the further lane of this output belt is exclusively where the science packs are dropped.

19: More about the output belt lanes

With the further lane carrying automation science packs, the untouched nearer lane can be set up to transport iron gear wheels exclusively, by using transport belt side-loading, which will be set up next.

20: Prepare the iron gear wheel output chest

Head to the back of the iron gear wheel assembler. Place a regular inserter and an output chest here. Note that this chest should fit between the assembling machine and the output belt that is 2 tiles away from the machine row. You can use this chest for quick access to a steady supply of iron gear wheels.

21: Create the iron gear wheel side-loading junction part 1

Now, on the side of the output chest that is closer to the science pack assemblers, place an inserter that takes from the output chest and places onto the ground.

22: Create the iron gear wheel side-loading junction part 2

Next, on the ground tile where the gear wheels are being dropped, place down a single transport belt unit and rotate it so that it faces into the output belt. This creates a transport belt pouring unit and a side-loading junction that drops iron gear wheels onto the nearer lane of the output belt. You can verify these belt structure names using the cursor.

23: About transport belt side-loading

Transport belt side-loading is a special transport belt feature when one belt's stopping end touches the side of another belt. The contents of the stopping belt now switch to pouring onto the other belt. Recalling that all belts have two lanes, only the lane nearer to the stopping end gets loaded up while the other lane is not affected.

24: Assembly row complete

With the final inserter and belt unit placed, the row machines should now be working entirely, with automation science packs and iron gear wheels starting to queue up at the end of output belt. Since the two lanes always operate independently, the items can queue up separately without any issues such as blocking the flow of each other.

25: About assembly rows

Creating rows of assembling machines such as this one is a core concept for building extendable factory areas. By using inserters and long handed inserters, a row of assembling machines has easy access to 4 different transport belts, or 8 different lanes. If you use the lanes carefully, you can fit several different crafting recipes along the same row of machines.

26: About splitter filtering

The science packs are ready to transport to labs, but the transport belt is also carrying iron gear wheels. Since the gears are needed for this row, it is best to permit only the science packs to leave the area. This can be done using splitter filtering.

27: Place the splitter

Craft a splitter and place it at the end of the output belt.

28: Pick up items

Stand on top of the output belt and hold "F" to grab some items from the belt under you.

29: Set the splitter filter

Take some automation science packs into your hand, and then select the splitter and press "CONTROL + LEFTBRACKET" to set its filter to the item in hand.

30: Set the splitter filter

You can press "CONTROL + RIGHT" or "CONTROL + LEFT" to choose the splitter's filter output direction. The selected side now allows only automation science packs to go through while everything else goes through the other side.

31: Extend filter outputs

Extend the splitter outputs belts by 1 tile each. Then hold "F" while standing on top of both stopping ends to clean up the items that went through before the filter was set.

32: Splitter filter done

The filter setup is now done. If you leave the splitter's iron gear wheel output as a dead end, the gears will back up along their own lane as desired, while the science pack lane will drain out from the science pack output of the splitter.

33: Place the first lab

With the science packs ready, it is time to place labs. At the end of the output belt, place the first lab with 1 tile of space, and then place an inserter to transfer science packs from the belt to the lab, and also a small electric pole to power them.

34: Place the other labs

Place the other labs behind the first lab, with a 1 tile gap between each pair.

35: Place inserters and poles in between labs

In every gap between 2 labs, place 1 inserter facing the lab closer to the belt, and 1 small electric pole. The rule here is that labs arranged in a 1-way line using inserters are able to collect missing science packs from each other directly. If set up correctly, every lab should now have a handful of science packs in it.

36: Test the labs

Your automation science factory is now complete. You can test it by researching the technology to unlock the logistic science pack.

37: Automation science complete

With your power supply, resource production, and basic research now all set up and automated, you are ready to keep exploring new technologies and growing the factory. New technologies offer new systems to set up and new resources to use, so that you can do more advanced science until you eventually unlock and build a rocket silo.

Chapter 12, The next steps

2: About this chapter

In this chapter the steps are more like guidelines for discussing what you can do next.

3: General progress

In general, progression is achieved by unlocking new technologies so that you can produce more advanced systems and components. Unlockables include new science packs and eventually the rocket silo.

4: Logistic science

Currently, the next milestone is the logistic science pack. It is produced using transport belts and inserters as its ingredients. You already have the recipes available to you and so the main question will be how to arrange your assembling machines. Here are some suggestions for how to think about it.

5: Logistic science crafting chains

First examine the crafting chains: Transport belts require only iron plates and iron gear wheels to produce. Inserters are a little more complex because they also require electronic circuits, which are made out of iron plates and copper cables made from copper plates. The question is how the crafting of the intermediate products should be distributed.

6: Last step on site production for iron gear wheels

Iron gear wheels are easy to produce because they require only iron plates and one crafting step. This suggests that you can avoid worrying about transporting gears across long distances, since you can just transport the more versatile iron plates instead and produce your gears on site at the last step.

7: Dedicated production areas for electronic circuits

Electronic circuits are more complex than gears because they require both iron and copper plates and also the extra step of making copper plates into copper cable. Furthermore they are used in many different recipes. Therefore it might be worth it to dedicate a row of assembling machines to producing only electronic circuits out of iron and copper plates, and then distributing the circuits across the rest of the factory along with the iron and copper plates.

8: About connecting different areas

After deciding what to produce in which area, another question is how to connect the different areas to each other. Usually it is good to use long transport belts that carry key resources or intermediate products across the factory, and have many splitters along these belts such that they have small branches going off to many different production areas. The coal supply belt is an example of this.

9: Build a mall

After building your logistic science area, consider expanding it or building a new area where you mass produce items to use yourself while building. For example, setup assembling machines that craft long handed inserters, assembling machines, underground belts, and the like. Among the community, engineer supplying areas like these are often called "malls".

10: Set up steel production

Another goal for the near future is to set up a furnace row for mass producting steel plates. You will need to scale up your iron production accordingly because 1 steel plate is produced from 5 iron plates. Note that one furnace producing steel is exactly as fast as one furnace producing iron.

11: Building walls

If you want to improve your defenses, you can research walls and craft them out of stone bricks. Turrets and some enemies can shoot over walls but they are good for redirecting enemies or defending your turrets.

12: Solar panels

You can research solar panels using logistic science after unlocking optics and steel production. Solar panels are easy to set up and have no pollution, but they only work about two thirds of the time and have low output overall.

13: Set up trains

With logistic science you can unlock trains in the future. While you can use very long transport belts instead, trains are faster and more versatile.

14: Oil will be needed

To get to technologies after logistic science, you will need to start collecting and processing oil. Crude oil wells are usually far away and so you will need to consider how to find them, how to bring electric power to your oil fields and how to transport oil back to your main base.

Chapter 13, Tips and tricks

2: More tutorial controls 1

In the tutorial system, it can help to review older chapters from time to time. To assist with this, you can skip between chapters by pressing "CONTROL + ALT + H" or "SHIFT + ALT + H".

3: More tutorial controls 2

While you can read the summary for a single tutorial step by pressing "ALT + H", you can also toggle summary mode on or off by pressing "CONTROL + SHIFT + H", so that you can browse tutorial steps quickly.

4: Menu search

As you unlock more types of items and your menus become larger, it might be easier to find something in a menu using the menu search box. Press "CONTROL + F" to open the search box and type in the item name and press "ENTER" to save the search term. You can then press "SHIFT + ENTER" to run the search on almost any menu. In some menus you can also search backwards by pressing "CONTROL + ENTER".

5: Copy pasting machine settings

You can copy paste settings such as assembling machine recipes or building filters so that you do not hav configure them every time. You can copy the settings of a selected machine by pressing "SHIFT + RIGHTBRACKET" on it and paste the settings on another machine by pressing "SHIFT + LEFTBRACKET" on it.

6: Warnings menu

You can press "P" to open the warnings menu. In addition to check machine statuses, this menu can identify some factory problems for you.

7: Chest slot locking

Chest inventories have a special feature where you can lock slots, starting from the last one and up until the first one, using "PAGE UP" or "PAGE DOWN". Locked slots can be emptied by inserters as usual, but they cannot be filled by inserters. Therefore you can limit how much a chest can be filled, and thus how much it drains your factory resources.

8: Check a building's status

You can check a building's current status and some other stats like its health level by pressing "RIGHTBRACKET" on it. This will help with figuring out any issues with your production.

9: Area scanning

Area scanning allows you to analyze a specific square area around your cursor. To use it, press "I" to toggle Cursor Mode and then press "SHIFT + I" and "CONTROL + I" to change the cursor size. For cursor sizes greater than 1 the cursor reports all the found entities within its area. You can press "DIRECTION KEYS" to move the cursor by its size for each press and scan a new area every time, or you can press "ARROW KEYS" to move the cursor by only 1 tile at any cursor size. You can then press "SHIFT + K" to get the relative position of the cursor box.

10: Directional scanning

If you want to examine entities in a specific direction only, you can press "SHIFT + END" to scan the direction you are facing, which is the direction of the cursor from you when you press "SHIFT + K". In addition to entities strictly in that direction, diagonally located entities within 10 tiles are indexed as well.

11: Chunk charting

The scanner tool is limited by how much of the world has been charted. You can chart more areas at the edge of your map by walking to them, or by using radars, which will scan nearby tiles instantly and further tiles slowly. You need to chart every location only once, for the scanner to model the topography.

12: Transport belt analyzer

If you press "LEFTBRACKET" on a transport belt, this opens the belt analyzer. You can use movement keys to check what items are on the selected belt sector and switch sectors by pressing "TAB". Underground areas cannot be scanned yet but this tool can help you review belt traffic and check for unwanted items mixing in.

13: Belt fullness reflects production issues

It is generally useful to aim to overfill your transport belts by producing more than you plan to consume. This allows identifying belts using their contents, and also any empty belt would be a sign to indicate a production problem.

14: Leave extra space

There is usually plenty of building space that you can find or create easily. Aim to leave at least 5 tiles of space between different production areas since you never know when you might need to pass a new belt between areas.

15: Rebuilding is normal

It is a normal part of Factorio to pick up all the buildings in an area and build something new and better. This is a great solution when you are feeling stuck.

16: Deconstruction planner and area mining

Press "ALT + D" to grab a deconstruction planner in hand. This is an area selection tool like the blueprint planner, but selected items get marked for deconstruction. This assists with the fast cleanup of an area using robots or area mining. If you end the area selection with "RIGHTBRACKET" instead, deconstruction markers get removed from it instead.

17: Area mining

Press "SHIFT + X" to mine a circular area around your cursor with a 10 tile radius. If you select nothing, this will clean up obstacles like trees and rocks and ground items and debris. If you select a rail, it cleans up rail objects. If you select a ghost, it cleans up ghosts, and if you select a structure marked for deconstruction with the matching planner in hand, it cleans up anything marked for deconstruction.

18: Instant mining tool

You can clear a large number of buildings using the instant mining tool. Press "CONTROL + X" to take it in hand and press "Q" to remove it. In this mode every building the cursor touches is instantly mined. You can also instantly area mine every building within 10 tiles of the cursor by pressing "SHIFT + X" while this tool is in hand. In contrast, area mining without the tool in hand will only target obstacles such as trees and rocks and items on the ground.

19: Machines take only what they need

You may have noticed that inserters do not try to completely fill up building input slots. The rule they use is to gather enough input ingredients for two more crafting cycles but not more, so that the majority of materials can remain on the belt or in the chest in front of the inserter for other inserters to use. The same applies to inserters refuelling machines, except for trains.

20: Production has ratios

It is feasible to use any number of machines that you want for any task, but in general there are numerical limits and ratios to help guide efficient production. Ratios can be deduced by examining recipes. For example, three assembling machines making copper cable are precisely enough for supplying two assembling machines making electronic circuits.

21: Power management

It is a good idea to keep track of your power grid. Examining any electric pole will report how its power grid is doing. Low power will slow down machines but they will keep on working, although if your coal mining drills slow down too much they might not be able to catch up with the demand from your boilers and you will have to disconnect part of your factory until your coal supply is restored.

22: Transport belt lanes

Transport belts have two lanes, and inserters prioritize the lanes using specific rules. When you split or merge or side-load belts, lanes interact in specific ways. You can safely ignore the lanes when you use only one type of item for each belt. Learning and using lane management later on can allow you to reliably transport two types of items on each belt instead of one, or to use the full capacity of a belt when high item traffic is needed.

23: Mixed ores and splitter filters

If two ore patches are touching, a mining drill that covers both of them will produce some of both ore types. Mixed factory inputs are usually troublesome, so it is recommended to use splitter filters to sort out belts that have mixed ore types.

24: Cursor coordinate placement

If you want to just move the cursor to specific coordinates, you can press "ALT + T" to open a text box and type them in. You can then teleport to the cursor to reach those coordinates.

25: Repeating the last spoken phrase

You can instruct to repeat the last spoken phrase by pressing "CONTROL + TAB". Try this now.

26: More info at the wiki

While the basics are covered here, there are several more features and tricks and shortcuts that you can find on the Factorio Access Wiki. Here is the link: https://github.com/Crimso777/Factorio-Access/wiki