Basic Helpful Tips

-Hold "f" to pickup items on the ground - this is great to mass collect items from belts

-Press q to cancel.

-q will also copy a building.

-Press r to rotate a building. h or v will flip the building horizontal or vertically, which is great for asymmetric buildings like refineries.

-you don't need to manually remove an old item when you're upgrading. i.e. when you upgrade inserters, just place the new one right over the old one.

-use productivity modules in labs. They don't emit pollution so there is no downside.

-efficiency modules also reduce pollution a lot, so they are great for your miners.

-Shift right click to copy recipes, shift left click to paste them.

-z (drop item) can be used to refuel things from your inventory. Great for early game.

-z can also be used to quickly load sentry guns when using them offensively

-When using a blueprint book, you can cycle through the different blueprints without opening the entire book by pressing SHIFT-middle mouse wheel.

-Rather than carrying around blueprints, you can press "b" and get a blueprint library that is shared between saves and does not take up space.

-Upgrade planners and deconstruction planners can be placed in your inventory just like a blueprint - in fact they can go into the blueprint book. This lets you customize these functions (for instance, if you want to upgrade only tier 1 belts to tier 2 belts). Shift click upgrade to cancel upgrade. This is very handy for upgrading as the normal upgrade tool might queue an upgrade for something you might not have yet (i.e. accidentally queue an upgrade for tier 3 belts).

-The best way to figure out item ratios is to hover over a factory producing the item in question. It normalizes the rate per second (a smelter needs to be actually smelting something to show this). If you hover over the recipe in the factory instead, it gives the items and time per unit instead which is not as helpful for figuring out the ratios.

-Early in the game, your starter factory can benefit from semi-automation, where you have to manually feed several storage boxes to keep the production going. This is still much better than manual crafting the items before you have a main bus, after which you should try to automate nearly everything.

-Definitely try to use both sides of the belt, either to optimize throughput of a very high demand item (i.e. copper plates for electronics production) or one item on each side of the belt to simplify assembly of 2-4 item recipes. You can also use this method to automatically feed fuel-based furnaces.

-Using splitters as filters and appropriate junctions, you can easily get items to the side of the belts you want.

-All sorters can now filter items.

-You can copy the recipe from an assembler (shift+right click) and paste it onto a requester chest (shift+left click) to request all the necessary items. If you change the multiplier under the logistics group, it will increase the number of items requested as it will only default to about 30 seconds of production time.

-A similar trick works for the filters for sorters.

-The ideal solar to capaciter ratio is 25 to 21.

-Also try to use the direct feed method when possible (i.e. 1-2 assemblers making gears feeding directly into an assembler that needs gears rather than a conveyor. It reduces clutter a lot and if the ratio is correct, will be more efficient.

-Main bus after your starter factory is a great way to go. I like to include 4 wide belt strips with at least 3 spaces in between (that way pipes can go in between). I like the following items: iron plates, copper plates, green circuits, steel, coal/stone (2x2), plastic/sulfur (2x2), red circuits/blue circuits (2x20, and batteries. Also, once you make a new item, don't be afraid to ship it both downstream and upstream as you may want it in previous production chains. 4 wide strips are also relatively easy to balance.

-The bus can also help you troubleshoot. If you see one item pretty sparse on the belt you can try to figure out what's going on or if you simply need more mines.

-There's a button by the blueprints to turn on/off your roboport. If your construction bots are constantly getting killed while repairing your tank while you're fighting, turn off the roboport.

-In your inventory there's a checkmark for personal logistics. If you're wondering why your logistics bots aren't delivering anything (especially after you respawn), check that.

-For pumpjacks, productivity modules until they are depleted, then speed modules.

-I like a dedicated smelting facility for iron, copper, steel, and a dedicated oil refinery. I train in the raw goods (or can pipe them in for liquids). That way, as you run out of raw materials you only need to make new mines, not new smelting facilities.

-Plan to make a lot of green electronics. A titanic amount. It's not crazy to dedicate an entire iron mine, iron smelter, copper mine, copper smelter, and dedicated massive green electronics factory to then ship it off to your main bus. They're probably the most in demand intermediate good.

-I don't understand circuits that well, and I'm sure there's great applications for them. But, they are handy and easy to set up for a warning light or siren for semi-automation. Just connect a circuit wire from one of the input boxes to either a light or siren, and specify the number of items you want it to be at for the light to turn on or the siren to sound (i.e. <5, red light goes on). You can use arithmatic combinators to monitor several boxes at once (i.e., ANY box has <5, red light goes on).

-Circuits are very helpful in a space platform to automatically eject needed but excessive materials so your storage doesn't back up.

-Logistics chests basically do the following:

1. Passive Provider - take something if you want it, bots can never deposit.
2. Storage - bots can deposit and take. for taking trash. Note you can FILTER these so your trash goes someplace useful (i.e. stones to concrete plant, etc). Logistics bots can use the items in it.
3. Active Provider - bots will only take, never deposit. High priority to remove these items. (The box says: Get these out of my inventory!)
4. Buffer - Only take these items if given special permission
5. Requester - fill the item I'm asking for, bots will never take items.

-Logistics are helpful, but belts are way more efficient. Still they are great for automating the building of certain low-demand structures or converting semi-automation to complete automation.

-Quality items can be awesome but beware. Quality ingredients CANNOT be used in a normal recipe. So they can plug up your lines if you have no filter system. As such it is probably better to filter with splitters rather than inserters since the insterter may occasionally miss one. This can shut down your whole production line eventually.

-Display panels are great for labeling manufacturing lines or listing to do items.

SPACE
-Platforms need lots of turrets and lots of ammo to survive transit. Don't make a trip unless you have plenty of ammo or your platform may come back very damaged. You can strand yourself this way as well.

-Put an outer wall around the edge, this can help mitigate damage from asteroid impacts by quite a bit

-Be sure to set up a circuit based ejection system to clear excessive inventory automatically. You need a LOT of ammo, so be sure the thresholds are pretty high.

-You'll want 1 dedicated space science platform that never leaves Navius. You'll also need a platform dedicated to travel.

-Biters can be a pain. Here's some helpful tips:

1. Defender capsules are great. Get them ASAP and semi-automate manufacturing them asap, with full automation being a key goal.
2. Poison grenades are great, throw a bunch of them right into the biter nest and it will help a lot.
   They're also great for clearing trees (much better than regular grenades)
3. Distractor capsules are awesome and don't take up a follower slot. This makes the large biter bases much better. It took me multiple playthroughs to realize how good distractors are.
4. Biter nests will regenerate over time. A good way to prevent this is to set ups some small pillboxes wherever you clear a nest. They tend to like to go back to the same locations and in relatively small numbers, so 2-3 turrets with a wall can stop them from re-establishing a nest entirely. This is critical to do, otherwise you'll play whack-a-mole with their bases constantly regenerating as your factory gets larger.
5. When you have the power, add radars to your pillboxes. This will also help explore the map for new resources.
6. The tank is much better than the car, but don't ram any biter nests or worms if there's a lot of enemies. If you slow down or stop there's a very high chance your tank will die, instead try to kite with a full set of defenders, then throw down a few distractors, then your best available grenades (I really like the poison grenades). Sadly flamethrower on the tank is not as good as the handheld one because it doesn't leave fire on the ground, so I prefer the tank machine gun early on and the main cannon once I automate tank shells.
7. The tank piercing shells are really good at quickly killing huge worms, they can also kill demolishers on Vulcanis quite well (especially depleted uranium shells).
8. After a while, you can wall off whole swaths of territory to hold from the biters indefinitely. You kind of have to do this if you're going to be off planet for a while. You'll need lasers and roboports to maintain these areas. Fire turrets are great if you want to take the time to rig the whole thing to oil.
9. Once you have construction bots, mines are great to put on your very active walls. They damage and slow the biters. They're also very cheap to make. They're great to put in your dragon's teeth network outside your walls that are getting attacked frequently.
10. Good dragon's teeth should have only a single space between them. That will slow down biters a ton while they are being shot up. Consider placing a mine in that space as well.
11. Tanks have grids so they can have personal lasers and shields. This helps a lot with survivability.
    

Trains are fun and easy. Here's some tips.

1. Loops are good for train stations as opposed to blind dead ends. The latter are ok early, but when you want a true rail network try to avoid them. If you need multiple stops for a given location, just add more semicircles to the loop. It's also good to avoid two-way trains, plus you only need a single front engine that way leaving more room for cargo and less need to fuel. Be sure the loop has signals to separate it so your passenger train sitting there doesn't stall the network.
2. Likewise a 2-rail system is much better than a monorail as your factory gets bigger than your starting factory. Make blueprints for common rails and intersections / stations.
3. Don't have intersections too close to each other (including loops for stations). Minimum 2 train lengths but more is better.
4. For signals, can't say I fully understand chain signals but this works: Chain signals at intersection entrances / SPLITS, Rail Signals at intersections exits / MERGES. If you follow this you will mostly avoid deadlocks as long as the trains aren't too long to potentially cross signals.
5. Put the signals at a distance so that a full train length fits in the intersection block. If it's sticking out it can deadlock easily. That's why it's important to have a standardized train length.
6. It's nice to have a dedicated small train to ferry you around and a few side or end loops dedicated to just that train for key facilities.
7. It's much better to use autopilot for your own train. Select the train, and when under automatic mode, CTRL-left click on any part of the track you want and it will take you there. You need to be zoomed out enough so the map looks like a map.
8. Don't feel obligated to fully automate all train refueling, at least not for a while. A full steel chest of coal will last a train 4.45 hours, a full steel chest of solid fuel will last 13.33 hours, and a full steel chest of rocket fuel (which is super easy to make once you have advanced oil processing) will last 44.45 HOURS. By that time you should have advanced logistics to automatically fill up the chests. Also bear in mind, the trains are sitting in the stations most of the time so it will be a lot longer than the times above.
9. Don't need to put a backward facing engine on your trains if your rails are setup to go one way. In fact, if you set the rails as one way it's better because you get an extra cargo wagon instead.
10. If an intersection keeps deadlocking, play around with chain signals until it works. Try putting chain signals before each intersection in addition to following the typical chain signal in, rail signal out rule.
11. You aren't stuck to 5 train cars. In settings you can change the trains to visualize up to 12 cars, default is 5. You can put as many as you want, but if you go long space your signals accordingly to avoid deadlocks.
12. I've usually used 1-3-1 trains, but I think I'll switch to 1-4 trains because it's easier to balance this with the 4-lane main bus.
13. The train track build planner is incredibly helpful. Start a section of track from a prior track, then hold SHIFT. This will automatically calculate the fastest way to the pointer and is great for making loops. If you press "g" it will go to the second layer.
14. Circular intersections are great as they allow trains to reverse direction.
15. If you name multiple stations the SAME name, the train will take the closest open slot. This way you can have multiple dropoff spots at the same station (i.e. a large oil refinery) or even multiple different locations (i.e. multiple iron mines). You can use train groups if you use this method, but I typically just have a dedicated train per mine. This is great for a refueling station.
16. You can also use a singled dropoff point, but before it use multiple different lanes for trains to wait their turn to dropoff.
17. For refueling, use the "interrupt" command. Once the condition is met (i.e. low fuel), it will create a temporary stop at the fueling station.
18. For double rails, how much space should you put in between? Anything you want, but after a playing with a few different styles, I prefer enough to fit a roboport, so a space of two tracks width in between the tracks.