Basic Factorio Guidebook

Overview

Factorio is a game requires players to solve logistic and engineering problems that might be overwhelming for a new comer. So this guide were made to provide overall info to new players who is interested to learn the basic knowledge before getting into the game.

The Engineer

Before getting start, here is some little tips and tricks for any engineer out there.

Patience is important.
There are countless designs and solutions possible and so as the problems come with it ten-fold. This can be quite a frustration so the engineer need to be very patience.
Simplified and organized
A “spaghetti” type of factory may not be completely bad, but a simple layout can makes logistic problems much easier to be solved and detected.
Keep an eye on alien
Some faunas are extremely hostile and territorial. They can be attracted by pollution from the player’s factory and will attack you from any direction so make sure to set up a good defensive system with turrets, traps, and obstacle. (Unless playing in peaceful mode)
Engineering can be a game of guessing or calculating.
Sometime logistic problems can be solved by a simple solution but sometime they don’t, so make sure to be ready for some complicated math or factory layouts.
Some mistake (no matter how big they are) can be deadly
Misplaced the layout by one block can result in an entire factory block to be removed.
The outpost running out of ammo can result in an entire production section to be shut down.
Ran out of electricity can result in the base being overrun by the hostile faunas.
One mistake in this game is mostly resulted in something very bad, so be careful.

Resources

Resources are required to keep your base running and acquire techs. Running out of them are usually bringing disasters, so watch out!

Logistics of raw material is everything.
Players’ base generally required a lot of raw material of iron/copper/uranium ores, oil, coal, stone, and sometime, water. So keep the supply line running can not and will not be neglected by any excuse. And if it possible, keep them running with little problems as you can.
Depending on coal to produce electricity too much is not ideal.
Coals are required in some crucial production as well as in electricity (especially in an early game). Depending too much on coal power means coal shortage can effectively cut your base from electricity and cripple it. Having an alternative way to make electricity like solar power or nuclear power is recommending.
Raw woods, don’t throw them always outright!
Woods can be used as an emergency fuel (beside crafting electric poles), so store them somewhere near a steam power plant and inject them in the system when coals are running low.
Use the rail network, you must.
Local resources will eventually dry out. However, rail system can deliver resources from a long distance in quantity with much cheaper and more effective than an alternative (transport belts/robots) so there is no need to shy away from it.

Electricity

Electricity is a life force of all factory. Without it, your factory will be severe disable and vulnerable to native faunas. There are three ways that electricity can be produced in game : steam power, solar power, and nuclear power and each comes with its own advantage and disadvantage.

Steam Power

The effective ratio of steam power production is :

Offshore pumps

Boilers

Steam engines

Electric mining drills

1

20

40

≤18*

Max electricity output : 36 MW
Note A : Each boiler need to be connect to 2 steam engines.
Note (*) : If work at full capacity (36MW) without drill upgrade.

Solar Power

The effective ratio of solar power production is :

Solar panels

Accumulators

100

84

Max electricity output : 6 MW (4.2 MW Average)
Max electricity store : 420 MJ*

Note (*) : This power can run a factory with 42 MW/s consumption for 10 second.

Nuclear Power

There is no solid ratio for nuclear power plant but here is the crucial part :

Type

Given (per unit)

Consumed (per unit)

Bonus

Nuclear Reactor

40 MW

–

+40 MW Neighbor core

Heat exchanger

~103 Steam/ sec

10 MW

–

Steam turbine

5.82 MW

60 Steam / sec

–
To get a neighbor bonus for nuclear reactors, they must :
- Be next to each other.
- Have all three of their heat pipes connected to each other.
The nuclear power will work when heat exchangers are connected to :
- Nuclear reactors by heat pipes.
- Steam turbines by pipes.
Basic nuclear power plant layout (2×2 nuclear reactors) has the ratio of :

Offshore pump

Heat exchanger

Steam turbine

4.12 (~4)

48

82.4 (~82)

Max electricity output : ~480 MW / 465.6 MW (practical)
Note A : Each pack of 12 heat exchangers must be connected to
- 1 offshore pump.
- 1 nuclear reactor.
- ~20 steam turbines.

Miscellaneous

Electricity info can tell you how much of electricity is produced and drained
You can open an electricity info by clicking on any electric pole nearby or in a map. The first bar (satisfaction) need to be longer than the second bar (production) or your factory will run out of juice (electricity).
A table comparing steam / solar / nuclear power

Comparison

Steam Power

Solar Power

Nuclear Power

Power Production Per Unit

Moderate

Low

Extremely High

Pollution

Extremely High

None

Low

Source of power

Fuels

Daylight

Uranium Fuel Cell

Technology Require

None

Solar Techs

Nuclear Techs

Resource Investment

Moderate

High

Extremely High

Space Require

Moderate

Extremely High

Low

Risk of Faunas Attack

Extremely High

Nearly Zero

Nearly Zero

Effect By

Fuel Shortage

Night Time

Uranium Shortage
Always have every possible ways of power production if possible.
Nuclear power will keep burning your nuclear power cell continually!

Transport Belts

Transport belts are the basic way to carry stuffs around your base automatically by yellow belts be the slowest and blue belts be the fastest.

DO NOT mix items on the same transport belts’ side
Each transport belt have two side (left and right). It is NOT wise to put different items on the same side (unless there can be filtered by well-placed splitters) or else the contaminated belt will cause the line to be stuck and wasted player time.
Avoid a ‘Spaghetti’ transport belts
Curvy main bus* and assembly line may not necessary be ineffective, but straight main bus and assembly line are much more easier to organize and expand.

(*) Note : “Main bus” is an organized pack of transport belt that carry a large various kind of item like a tree trunk which can be broken into branches to feed the resources to assembly lines. it is the most common way to set up a base in Factorio.
A common way to mixing items on the belts is showing in the picture below :

Inserter

Inserters are used to put material into assembly machines or others. They will move times from its front (indicated with yellow line) to its back (indicated with yellow arrow) as long as they are powered/fueled and programmed.

There are 7 types of inserter, with different color and unique ability :

Type

Featured

Speed

Electricity

Burner inserter

Run with coals / Required no electricity

Extremely slow

N/A

(Normal) inserter

Cheap to produce and low power drain

Slow

Required

Long handed inserter

Two tiles range

Moderated

Required

Fast inserter

Faster than normal inserter

Fast

Required

Filter inserter

Can take specific items set by the engineer

Fast

Required

Stack inserter

Can take multiple items at once

Fast

Required

Filter stack inserter

Is Filter and Stack inserter combine

Fast

Required
Normal, Fast and Long handed inserter are essential. For instance,
- Normal Inserters can provide material for assembling machines with long production time or low priority to lower electricity consumption.
- Fast Inserters can provide material for assembling machines with short production time or high priority.
- Long Hand Inserters can provide material for assembling machines from other belt, chests, machinery from 2 block away.
Stack inseters are excelled at a train station
They can pick up multiple items at once at high speed; very useful at load/unload cargo.
Inserters will not put unrelated items to its target
For example, they will not put items into an assembling machine that do not required such items (like copper ores into a gear assembly machine), or chests with a limited quota (set within the chest – shown as a red square) or anything but fuels into a fuel-powered machine.
Inserter can interact with anything with item slots as shown in the table below :

Furnaces

Assemble machined

Chemical plant

Lab

Gun turret

Locomotive

Cargo wagon

Vehicles

Boiler

Burner mining drill

Roboport

Centrifuge

Oil refinery

Rocket silo

Chests

Buffer Chest

Active Chest

Passive Chest

Requester Chest

Storage Chest

Techs

Techs provide players with cool stuffs, better equipment, bonus, and advancement to win the game. However, one techs can only be researched at a time (multiple labs only speed the process up) so make it count.

Tech Priority

Priority

First

Second

Machines

Advanced Electronics (2)

Automation (3)

Electric Energy Acumulators

Fluid Handling

Logistics (3)

Oil Processing

Rocket Silo

Solar Energy

Electric Energy Distribution (2)

Fast Inserter

Nuclear Power

Stack Inserter

Crafting

Logistic Science Pack

Chemical Science Pack

Production Science Pack

Utility Science Pack

Advanced Material Processing (2)

Advanced Oil Processing

Battery

Concrete

Electric Engine

Electronics

Engine

Explosives

Flammables

Low density structure

Lubricant

Plastics

Robotics

Rocket Control Unit

Rocket Fuel

Steel Processing

Sulfur Processing

Circuit Network

Cliff Explosive

Coal liquefaction

Kovarex Enrichment

Landfill

Laser

Logistic System

Military Science Pack

Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing

Optics

Space Science Pack

Uranium Processing

Military

Military (4)

Atomic Bomb

Defender

Distractor

Destroyer
Explosive rocketry

Flamethrower

Rocketry

Uranium Ammo

Modules

Productivity Module (3)

Speed Module (3)

Effectivity Module (3)

Effect transmission

Transportation

Railway

(Others)

Bonus

N/A

(All Available)

Armor Modules

N/A

(All Available)

Augmentation

N/A

(All Available)

Defense

N/A

(All Available)

Note :

First priority techs are required to build a rocket silo in Factorio.
Second priority techs are improving engineer’s quality of life and work.

Rail Transportation

Train systems can transport resources at long range in low cost and quantity. It is required lots of skill to set its layout properly and effectively.

A brief train setup procedure is :
- Build railways
  Connecting your base to your destination with rail. Either by robots (through SHIFT key) or manually place the rail.
- Place a train stop
  Place train stop on top of the rail at your destination and your base (if didn’t have one). The arrow of the train stop MUST match the way of an incoming train, or the train will not dock in.
- Setup item loaders
  The inserters can be either Fast / Filter inserters or Stack / Stact Filter inserters like this :
- Place Rail Chain / Rail signal on crosses and junctions
  Rail Chain signals (the blue one) will indicate where the train should stop and set the rail to be a one-way rail (indicated by its arrow).
  Rail Signals (the three light one) can be placed beside the Rail Chain signals to set the rail to be a two-way rail again.
  
  In case of junction :
  - Rail Chain signals’ arrow must be pointing toward the crossing / junction.
  - Rail signals’ arrow must be pointing away from the crossing / junction.
- Place your locomotives and cargo wagons on the rail
  Set a schedule on your locomotives and (optional) set filters by clicking a middle mouse on a specific (empty) slot in the cargo.
  
  Additionally, two or more locomotives can be placed on each sides of cargo to make the train move back and forward in an automatic mode. An example is shown below here :
  
  Note : it is not advice to set up a train like this but using a double rail system instead.
- Set off the train
  Switch train mode to “Automatic” (in the train GUI) to set off the train.
Avoid sharing a rail between two or more trains
Especially for an inexperienced engineer who never built a multiple-way railway before. Running an experiment on your rail first to prevent a potential disaster or use a double railway instead.

Vehicle

Vehicle can be researched and used for various role with its unique features.

General Info of land vehicle:

Type

Health

Armor

Lowest Top Speed

Inventory slots

Weapon

Car

450

Light

87.6 km/h

80

Heavy machine gun

Tank

2000

Medium

50.1 km/h

80

Cannon / Flamethrower / HMG

Spidertron

3000

Heavy

~46 km/h

80 + 10×6 grid

Cannon / Flamethrower / HMG
Weapons :

Type

Primary

Secondary

Support

Car

—

Mags

—

Tank

Cannon shells

Mags

Flamethrower ammo

Spitron

Rockets x 4 slots

—

—
Tank is good at mid-game
They can be used to crush faunas nests and providing player a additional protection and firepower. But be careful, tanks can get stuck and quickly surrounded by faunas quite easily.
Car is the best vehicle to navigate around
Knowing how to use car properly can help you expanding your base or exploring greatly.
Vehicle are portable.
You can put your vehicles in your inventory at anytime (by hold a RMB on it). But you can’t use their extra inventory this way and have to refuel it every time you place them.
Grenades and robots can be used / deployed while driving a vehicle

Robots

Robots can help player doing some chores or delivering goodies in a tight spot.

How do Logistic chests work :

Type

Receive Item From

Additional Taken / Recieve

Storage Chest

Active Provider Chest

Engineers’ Request / Trash Slots

Requester Chest

Other Logistic Chests

Engineers’ Trash Slots

Buffer Chest

Other Logistic Chests, but blue

Engineers’ Request / Trash Slots
Passive Provider and Requester Chest are needed for a simple logistic network
Request lists in Requester Chest can be set by cilck on the chest, click in a request slot in the middle of GUI (Graphical user interface), and select the item and number you want.
Here is all info you should know about roboport :
- Roboport’s green area means the range of Construction robot. Brown area means the range of Construction and Logistic robot.
- The brown area need to be connected in order to share robots and networks. The connected roboport will be shown with dash lines.
- Construction robots (in Roboport) will take any available items in logistic chests (in its range) to build, repair, and reconstruction.
- Logistic robots (in Roboport) will take items in logistic chests to another (in its range).
  See the table above to learn how item will be delivered for each chest.
Here is all info about Personal Roboport :
- Modular or Power Armors can be modified with a portable roboport to let Construction robots working from your inventory.
- You can command your Construction robot (to build) by holding SHIFT key and places the building (in your cursor).
- If there is not enough Construction robots in your inventory, A roboport (in range) nearby will sent their robots to complete your order (by using resources in its network).
- Construction robots in engineer’s inventory with active Personal roboport will exclusively take any items in engineer’s inventory to operate.

Hostile Faunas

You are not alone on this planet. Most faunas are hostile and will attack you. You need to learn about your enemy as well as yourself, as the wise man once said, “Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories”.

Enemy info

Land Faunas

Biter

Range (m)

Damage

Speed (km/h)

Health

Small

Melee

7 (Physical)

43.2

15

Medium

Melee

15 (Physical)

51.8

75

Big

Melee

30 (Physical)

49.7

375

Behemoth

Melee

90 (Physical)

64.8

3000

Spitter

Range (m)

Damage

Speed (km/h)

Health

Small

13

12 (Acid)

40

10

Medium

14

24 (Acid)

35.6

50

Big

15

36 (Acid)

32.4

200

Behemoth

16

60 (Acid)

32.4

1500

Worm

Range (m)

Damage

Speed (km/h)

Health

Small

25

36 (Acid)

(Static)

200

Medium

30

48 (Acid)

(Static)

400

Big

38

72 (Acid)

(Static)

750

Behemoth

48

96 (Acid)

(Static)

750
Faunas Nest

Type

Health

Spawner

350

Enemy Tactic

Biters and Spitter will swarm and overwhelm their enemy in possible quantity.
Biter and Spitter will not give up on attack or defend until they died.
The attack direction are random and not specific.
the number and strength of faunas are depending on pollution level of the world
Spitter and worms will predict and shoot their acid ahead of moving enemy.
Only worms will not move out of faunas’ nest and will protect them to the dead.

Weapon and Security System

There are a lot of choices to defend and attack in Factorio. You maybe provide with a pitiful firearm at first but as the tech go, you will get access to more firearms with high caliber and good defensive structures. Use them, plan them, adapt them as you must to survive on the planet and keep the factory grows.

Personal Weapon

Type of weapon

Type of ammo

Shooting speed

Tech

Pistol

Mags

Fast (4 / sec)

[None]

Submachine gun

Mags

Very Fast (10 / sec)

Military 1

Shotgun

Shotgun shells

Slow (1 / sec)

Military 1

Combat shotgun

Shotgun shells

Moderate (2 / sec)

Military 3

Flamethrower

Flamethrower ammos

Rapid (60 / sec)

Flamethrower

Rocket launcher

Rockets

Slow (1 / sec)

Rocketry
Support Weapon

Type of weapon

Base Damage

Effect

Tech

Grenade

35 explosion

N/A

Military 2

Cluster grenade

35 explosion

Extra grenades

Military 4

Land mine

250 explosion

Stun large targets

Land mines

Slowdown capsule

N/A

Slow enemy

Military 3

Poison capsule

8 poison / sec

N/A

Military 3

Defender drone

5 Physical

N/A

Defender

Distractor drone

7.5 Laser

3 units / capsule

Distractor

Destroyer drone

10 Electric

5 units / capsule

Destroyer
Security Structure

Building

Damage

Accuracy

Speed

Required

Gun Turret

(Depend on Ammo)

Always hit

Fast (10/s)

Ammo

Laser Turret

20 (Laser)

Always hit

Slow (1.5/s)

Electricity

Flame Turret

3 (Fire) + Ignition

Low

Rapid (30/s)

Oil

Artillery turret

500 (Area of Effect)

Hit on target

Slothful (0.3/s)

Artillery shell
Defensive Structure

Structure

Health

Usage

Required

Stone wall

350

Barricade

Stone wall

Gate

350

Entrance

Gate

Combat and Strategy

Fighting the native faunas do not required much of plan since the player always have an upper hand of techs and faunas have advantage of their number. As long as the player is not overwhelmed by faunas and well-supplied, they will always win.

Armors / Modular Armors / Armor modules

Armor

Type

Grid Size

Tech

Investment

Light armor

N/A

N/A

Low

Heavy armor

N/A

Heavy armor

Fairly Low

Modular armor

5×5

Modular armor

Moderate

Power armor

7×7

Power armor

Slightly High

Power armor MK2

10×10

Power armor 2

Extremely High
Armor Modules
Disclaimer :
- Every Modules with MK2 REQUIRED their weaker one to craft.
- Every Modules is stackable, EXCEPT Nightvision and Discharge Defense.
- Every Modules REQUIRED their own tech to craft.
Power Generator

Power output

Grid Taken

Solar Panel

10 kW

1×1

Fusion Reactor

750 kW

4×4

Energy Storage

Power Capacity

Grid Taken

Battery

20 MJ

1×2

Battery MK2

100 MJ

1×2

Energy Shield

Energy Usage

Grid Taken

Shield Points

Energy Shield

24 kW

2×2

50

Energy Shield MK2

36 kW

2×2

150

Defense Device

Energy Usage

Grid Taken

Damage

Laser Defense

600kW

2×2

75 (Range : 15)

Discharge Defense

[All Available]

2×2

100 (AOE : 8)

Equipment

Energy Usage

Grid Taken

Bonus

Nightvision

10 kW

3×2

Nightvision

Exoskeleton

200 kW

2×4

+ 30% Speed

Belt immunity

100 kW

1×1

Immovable by Belt

Portable Roboport

Capacity / Charging

Grid Taken

Max / Recharge

Working Area

Roboport

35 MJ / 20 kW

2×2

10 robots / 2 ports

30×30 tiles

Roboport MK2

35 MJ / 20 kW

2×2

25 robots / 4 ports

40×40 tiles

Strategy

Tactic 1 : Maintain your logistic network
You can NOT win over the faunas without a well-supplied and well-maintained base. Reduce all possibility of logistic meltdown (resources shortage / radar shutdown / power outage / worn down defensive line) to make sure the faunas will stand no change against your mighty machinery.
Tactic 2 : Best equipment first
There is no need to safe your best equipment for the later use. Use them as you must.
Tactic 3 : Kill them with fire. Burn the xeno.
Faunas are weak to fire attack. But be careful not to burn a forest down. A wildfire can spread very quickly if left unchecked.
Tactic 4 : No Senseless Massacre
More of fauna nests destroy, the stronger they become. Only destroy their nest if it’s necessary (like the nests that are too close to your base/outpost or on needed resources).
Tactic 5 : Always Fortified Your Base
Especially around a power plant or a vital part of base / transportation.
Tactic 6 : Turret Creep
It is not wise to approach faunas nests in the early game. However, with a help of gun turrets; you can somewhat eradicate a small nest without much of injury.

To do a turret creep,
- Place turrets near a faunas nest.
- Quickly loaded the turret by Shift-click with mags and let the turret do the job.
- Get closer and repeated until all the nest is destroyed.
Tactic 7 : Multiple layers walls
Walls can be place double for a better defense line. This tactic was used once in an ancient time to effectively slow down and pull back enemy siege.