Factorio Walkthrough : Stone Age to Space Race

Overview

Here is a guide made for roughly suggesting what should the player do in they current stage.

Stage 1 : Crash Landing

Date : day 1

You have successfully landed on an uncivilized planet by an escape ship. The surface is peaceful, but the look can be deceived. This planet is a home of thousands hostile territorial bug-like faunas that will attack any stranger on sight. They will coming soon and you must act quick.

Your inventory/escape ship should provide you some material to start with a trustworthy basic engineer equipment. Right now, you must use your knowledge and anything available to you to survive.

With no further ado, let’s get started.

Stage : Crash Landing
Goal : Set up a power plant and simple smelting facility
Difficulty : Very Easy

Problem : Insufficient resources, lack of electricity, automation needed
Threat : Packs of small biter

Resource needed :

• First Priority : Iron plates and stones
• Second Priority : Copper plates, Coals

Facility Required :

• Simple Smelting Facility : Stone furnaces, burner mining drills
• Steam power plant : A offshore pump, boilers, steam engines

Techs Required :

• [N/A]

Stage 2 : Steam Engines

Date : day 2 – 8

Now it’s time for the first automation work.

Burner mining drills are quite handy, but electricity drills are better. Replace the old drills with new electric drills and start to setup research, assembly, and auto-smelting facility.

To keep it simple,

1. To make a rocket and cool stuffs, one needs lots of tech.
2. To get tons of tech, one need labs.
3. To make labs work, one need an assembly line.
4. To make a good assembly line, one need a main bus and an auto-smelting facility.

There will be a lot of work and maintenance. Faunas may attack your base soon if your base is in the middle of a desert with no pollution absorption from forest and grass.

Stage : Steam Engines
Goal : Setup auto-smelting facility, assembly lines, and a main bus
Difficulty : Moderate

Problem : Basic logistic ineffective, insufficient layout
Threat : pack of small bitter

Resource needed :

• First Priority : Iron and copper plates
• Second Priority : Stones, Coals

Facility Required :

• Auto-smelting facility : Stone furnaces, Electricity mining drills.
• Assembly line : Assembling machine 1
• Main bus : Transport / underground belts, Splitters
• Research facility : Labs
• Basic security : Gun turrets

Techs Required :

• Electronics
• Automation 1, Logistics 1
• Turrets, Military 1

• Gears are worthy to be kept on a main bus if the factory is big enough.
• Space out your facility is recommended.

Stage 3 : Steel Working

Time : day 9 – 20

Basic facilities should be handy at the moment, the next step would be getting new material. First, you must build a steel plate facility in your factory.

Steel plates are highly demanded for many things so an effective steelworks is a must. A brick facility should be setup as well for walls, steel furnaces, and researching.

Resource shortage and faunas should be quite serious in this time as well. As the factory is making more goods, it’s also making more pollution and noise. It’s wise to setup a defensive line to deal with faunas and a train system for deliver more materials to make even more goods.

Stage : Steel Working
Goal : Setup a steel auto-smelting facility.
Difficulty : Normal

Problem : Resource shortage, cramp base
Threat : Regular hordes of small / medium bitter and spitter

Resource needed :

1. First Priority : Iron / copper / steel plates
2. Second Priority : Coals, Stone, Stone bricks

Facility Required :

1. Auto-smelting steel facility : Furnaces
2. Fortified security : Gun turrets, Stone walls

Techs Required :

• Logistic science pack
• Advanced electronics
• Electric energy distribution 1
• Automation 2, Logistics 2
• Steel processing, Advanced material processing
• Military 2, Stone walls, Gate

Stage 4 : Refinery

Date : day 21 – 60

Logistic problems will be very challenging and be much worse as the time go on.

In order to progress, Crude oil must be extracted and delivered to your factory for research and advance production. Install refineries to make petroleum gas. After getting the tech, setup a cracking facility to double the petroleum production. This is also a good time to learn how to setup a good train system.

If there are not enough oil fields, then you must setup several outposts to explore the territory. If the area you need is infested with faunas, then take them out by force with fire and steel!

Stage : Refinery
Goal : Set up a refineries and cracking facilities
Difficulty : Hard

Problem : Advanced logistic problems, resource shortage, ineffective assembly lines
Threat : Significant horde of big / medium bitters and spitters

Resource needed :

• First Priority : Iron/Copper/Steel plates, Crude oil.
• Second Priority : Coal, Stone, Stone bricks

Facility Required :

• Refineries : Oil refineries, Storage tanks
• Cracking facilities : Chemical plant, Storage tanks
• Oilfield : Pumpjack, Radars, Gun turrets
• Rail Transportation :
  Train stop, Rail, Locomotive, Cargo wagon, Fluid wagon

Techs Required :

• Stack Inserter
• Military / chemical science pack
• Advanced Electronics 2, Engine
• Oil Gathering, Fluid Handling, Advance Oil Processing
• Railway, Automated rail transportation, Rail signals, Fluid wagon
• Battery, Explosives, Flammables, Plastics, Sulfur

• Coals can be turned into Crule Oil at refineries with coal liquefaction tech.
• Heavy oil can be tuned into light oil and light oil into petroleum by cracking at chemical plants with advance refinery tech.

Stage 5 : Tech Frenzy

Date : day 61 – 150

With every raw material under your control, no techs is impossible to get.

Now the problems is rested within your factory. With loads of Items needed to be made and used for research so as the need of electricity. Steam power plants should be supported or replaced by solar or nuclear power plants in order to make much more of reliable and stable electricity supply.

Logistic problems will be overwhelming. Your outpost may run out of resources, be under constantly attacked by faunas, or become ineffective/obsolete. Your assembly lines may be contaminated due to your own error. Your old factory layout may not work as good as it used to be. Faunas may start to push through your defenses and damage your machinery.

In this chaos, you must stay calm. Keep an eye on faunas and constantly upgrade or fix your layout / automation. The factory must grow and there is no excuse for it.

Stage : Tech Frenzy
Goal : Setup every science pack assembly line and research space tech
Difficulty : Extreme

Problem : Complex logistic problem, heavy resource shortage, ineffective factory layout
Threat : Full-scale assault of big / medium bitter and splitter

Resource needed :

• First Priority : Iron / copper/ steel plates, crude oil
• Second Priority : Coal, Stone, Stone bricks, Uranium-235

Facility Required :

• Heavy fortified security : Laser turrets
• Uranium processing facility : Centrifuge
• Solar power plants : Solar panels, Accumulators
• All Science pack assembly line : Assembling machine 2 or 3
• High-end miscellaneous assembly line : Assembling machine 2 or 3
• Nuclear power plants :
  Offshore pumps, Heat exchangers, Steam turbines, and Nuclear reactors

Techs Required :

• Concrete
• Advanced material processing 2
• Production / Utility science pack
• Laser, Laser Turrets
• Automation 3, Logistics 3
• Solar energy, Electric energy accumulators
• Rocket fuel, Low density structure
• Uranium processing, Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing, Kovarex enrichment process
• Module, Efficiency / Productivity / Speed module 3

• Increase production
• Simplified the layout
• Expanding

Final Stage : Space Race

Date : day 151+

You have been working so hard for this very moment to build your own rocket.

A rocket facility is pretty demanding for lots of low density structure, rocket control unit, and rocket fuel plus a satellite. All of this required a lot of raw material so make sure you have them enough for your factory to handle.

Sooner or later, a rocket will be ready for launch. If you want to speed thing up, try installing four productive modules 3 in your rocket silo to save up your resources and time.

Stage : Space Race
Goal : Set up a rocket facility
Difficulty : Maximum

Problem : Highly complex logistic problem and resource shortage.
Threat : Full scale assault of behemoth / big bitter and spitter

Resource needed :

1. First Priority : Iron / copper / steel plates, crude oil
2. Second Priority : Coal, Stone, Stone bricks

Facility Required :

1. Rocket facility : Assembling machines 3, chemical plants, a rocket silo

Techs Required :

• Rocket Silo, Rocket control unit

Note : Four productivity module 3s can reduce the cost of rocket by 1/4.

The End : Prepare to Launch!

Time : day 160+

Finally, your rocket is finally ready to launch.

No matter how vicious of faunas and how nuisance of the logistic problems are – they can not stop you from obtaining a space tech again. Now, it is time to launch the rocket to the sky and reward you with space science packs and continue your path as an experienced engineer and furthermore.

P.S. do not forget to put a satellite in your rocket before you launch it!