Official Factorio Wiki - User contributions [en]

Talk:Splitters

2016-05-09T18:50:18Z

Maelstrominabox: Created page with "== Deletion == I'm against deleting this page for the same reasons as stated in Talk:Transport_belts. Adding this information to the Belt Transport system page seems to pl..."

== Deletion ==
I'm against deleting this page for the same reasons as stated in [[Talk:Transport_belts]]. Adding this information to the Belt Transport system page seems to place all the detailed information in one giant heap. Since we seem to have things broken down into chunks of specific information, it would probably benefit new users to be able to breakdown each part of the Transport system into manageable pieces, thereby allowing for further breaking down into more detailed topics. If the goal is to have all of this information in one central location, then perhaps an improvement on the Table of Contents of each page could be improved, but I don't know how well that would alleviate things looking like an info dump. --[[User:Maelstrominabox|Maelstrominabox]] ([[User talk:Maelstrominabox|talk]]) 18:50, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Transport belts

2016-05-09T18:36:20Z

Maelstrominabox: /* Deletion */

== To do: ==

Add
* belt direction, how to change it
* replacement,how to replace with faster belt type

== Deletion ==
I'm against the deletion of the Page. This Page was written by me and explains the mechanics of all the "transport belts" in detail. Each specific yellow, red and blue transport belt wiki page links to the "transport belts" page for more general Information about transport belt mechanics. The reason for Deletion is that it got merged into the page "Belt transport system". This Article is going to explain all of the core mechanics of belt's, underground Belt's and splitters at once. I can fill a long article with mechanics for each of them seperatly and merging everything into one page will end in a huge, messy article. If I want to know something about transport belt's in general, I don't want to read about splitters and underground belt first.

- AntiElite / AntiElitz <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[User:AntiElite|AntiElite]] ([[User talk:AntiElite|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/AntiElite|contribs]]) 02:47, 25 April 2016‎ (UTC)</span></small>
:I would suggest using [[Belt transport system]] as a general overview of belts, underground belts, and splitters. And have each section link to a more detailed article of each type (ala ''Main page: [[Transport belts]]''). --[[User:Artorp|Artorp]] ([[User talk:Artorp|talk]]) 14:43, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
:: I would like to second [[User:Artorp|Artorp's]] suggestion. I feel like [[Belt transport system]] is much more useful as an overview with links to each piece broken down into more detail. I was looking for information the other day in that section, and having to dig through all the information for one specific thing was a little overwhelming. --[[User:Maelstrominabox|Maelstrominabox]] ([[User talk:Maelstrominabox|talk]]) 18:35, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Belt transport system

2016-05-06T13:28:47Z

Maelstrominabox: /* Speed, Density and Throughput: About finding bottlenecks */ changed spelling, and rewording the more speed section

{{Languages}}
[[File:Belt-system-1.png|thumb|256px|Transport belts(#1) move items, Splitters (#2) distribute the input onto both outputs 1:1, Underground belts (#3) are used to bypass obstacles.]]
The belt transport system is the first transport system available in Factorio, and together with [[Railway|Trains]] and [[Logistic network|Logistics Robots]] make up the backbone of any Factorio base. Transport belts (sometimes called conveyors) are used to transport [[Items]]. Belts don't need power for transportation. This is one of the many [[Mysteries of the Factorio World]].

== Beginner ==
{| class="wikitable"
! [[Transport belts]] !! [[Underground belts]] !! [[Splitters]] !! Speed ([[tile]]s/[[Game-second|second]]) !! Needed research
|-
| {{imagelink|basic-transport-belt|Basic transport belt}}
| {{imagelink|basic-transport-belt-to-ground|Basic underground belt}}
| {{imagelink|basic-splitter|Basic splitter}}
| ~1.8
| [[Logistics 1]] Basic underground belt and Basic splitter
|-
| {{imagelink|fast-transport-belt|Fast transport belt}}
| {{imagelink|fast-transport-belt-to-ground|Fast underground belt}}
| {{imagelink|fast-splitter|Fast splitter}}
| ~3.6
| [[Logistics 2]]
|-
| {{imagelink|express-transport-belt|Express transport belt}}
| {{imagelink|express-transport-belt-to-ground|Express underground belt}}
| {{imagelink|express-splitter|Express splitter}}
| ~5.6
| [[Logistics 3]]
|-
|}

Transport belts just move items. To take items from/put items onto a belt, use [[Inserter]]s.

=== Differences between the belt tiers ===
The main difference between different tiers of belt is the speed at which they operate. As a belt is upgraded from yellow to red to blue, it gets faster and is able to move more items. The [[Transport belts/Physics|Physics]] page has some technical information on exact values for each tier of transport belt.

=== Merging and un-merging ===
Belts have '''two lanes''' that can be used for transporting. This allows for either a double flow of one material, or with some careful setup, transporting two different materials on the same belt. Mixed belts can be beneficial for smelting ore, or producing items with many different ingredients such as the science pack 3.
Un-merging a mixed belt is fairly easy too, since an underground belt will block half of your belt. So there is no reason to be afraid of mixed belts at all.

[[File:Transport_belts_merge.gif|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_unmerge.gif|300px|top]]

=== Balancing belts ===
Sometimes one side of a belt will be more empty than the other. In this case, rebalancing the belt can be helpful.

The left design will only rebalance equally if one side of the belt is empty while the right version always balances equally.

[[File:Transport_belts_balance1.gif|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_balance2.gif|300px|top]]

[https://i.imgur.com/jKRaZEl.jpg Another example, including side balancing] credit /u/Bhoedda from reddit

== Advanced ==
=== Speed, Density and Throughput: About finding bottlenecks ===
Maximizing the throughput is important, since it will keep belts efficient. Therefore some definitions need to be introduced:

; Speed
: How fast does a belt move.
; Density
: How tight are the items put on the belts.
; Throughput
: This is speed * density. It describes how many items pass by in a given time.

So there are two opportunities to enhance the throughput:

; More density
:Sometimes items have little spaces next to each other that aren't big enough for other items to fit in. In this case reordering the items can still increase the density. This can be done by temporarily increasing the belt speed on a single tile or by merging 2 lanes with an inserter.

[[File:Transport_belts_density.gif|top|300px]]

; More speed
:If the belts in the factory are already at maximum density, their speed can still be upgraded with better belts. Finding the bottleneck is the first thing that needs to be done, usually it can be discovered quite easily. There will be a part of the belt where the items don't move quickly (or at all) or stop at maximum density and suddenly they come to a point where this 'stop and go' effect releases itself, the bottleneck has been found. In most cases, this will be the place where belt optimization is needed.

=== Belts ===
[[File:Transport_belts_speed.gif|300px|thumb|right|Animation showing the three types of belt and their speed (from top to bottom: regular belts, fast belts and express belts).]]
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! scope="col" | Type
! scope="col" | Max. throughput ([[Items]] per [[game-second]])
! scope="col" | Speed ([[Tile|Tiles]] per [[game-second]])
! scope="col" | Max. density ([[Items]] per [[Tile|tile]])
! scope="col" | Required [[Research|technologies]]
|-
| {{imagelink|basic-transport-belt|Basic transport belt}} || 13.393* || 1.875* || 7.143* || none
|-
| {{imagelink|fast-transport-belt|Fast transport belt}} || 26.786* || 3.750* || 7.143* || [[Logistics 2]]
|-
| {{imagelink|express-transport-belt|Express transport belt}} || 40.179* || 5.625* || 7.143* || [[Logistics 3]]
|}
 * experimental value: See '''[[Transport_belt_experiments|Transport belt experiments]]''' for more detailed information.

=== Splitters ===
[[File:Mpstark-1vrKld4.gif]]
[[File:Mpstark-A60nIbv.gif]]
[[File:Mpstark-JNNFTUC.gif]]

The behavior of splitters looks simple at first glance. But they are not that simple. Splitters have an astonishing amount of uses.

* splitters have two input-belt-sides and two output-belt-sides on which you can connect any [[Transport belts|belt]] or [[Underground belts|underground belt]]
* splitters '''don't shuffle the lanes on the belts'''; items on the left input [[Transport belts/Belt lane|belt lane]] don't change the side to the right lane (and vice versa).
* '''Splitting'''
** if two output-belts are connected, then every input-item is put alternated on one of the two output-belts. Or in other words: it is guaranteed, that the inputed items are output in a ratio of 50% on each belt.
** if one of the output [[Transport belts/Belt lane|belt lanes]] are full, then it tries to output on the other output belt. This is useful to fill belts.
** a lot more details about the exact splitting can be found here http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3765 and here http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=511&p=3019 !
* '''Joining''' [[File:T&T Belt04.jpg|thumb|200px|Feeding from side is only a good use, if you want to make a queue - e. g. for mines, some output-buffer]] [[File:T&T Belt03.jpg|thumb|200px|Better: The capacity of the output belt is fully used.]]
** splitters can be used to join two belts into one. This has a much higher throughput than only side-inserting.
** as with splitting, the belt lanes aren't mixed up.
** Use faster splitter if you want to feed into a faster belt, because otherwise your splitter is the bottleneck!

=== Underground belts ===
[[File:Split-swap.png|thumb|256px|You can turn the order of the lanes or split the lanes completely with the underground belts trick]]

Underground belts can be used to cross different flows of items without interfering. They move items like a [[Transport belts|normal belt]].

* You can cross any number of entities and all types of ground, like water, swamps, etc. (input and output of course over water)
* You can cross other underground stuff (any number of underground belts or underground pipes). They won't be mixed.
* For the connection only the endpoints (entry-side and exit-side) are relevant.
* The maximum distance underground is 5 [[tile]]s.
* An underground belt pair with a blocked output stores up to 20 items. (Per lane? Untested!)
* If you mine an underground belt, up to 20 items are recovered, the remaining items in the underground are placed into your inventory.
* The half of the underground belt tile with a belt can accept input from the side. The other half (with a tunnel entrance) blocks incoming items.

This last fact is important, because it can be used to do some tricks.

=== Moving other Entities: About highways, advanced defenses and moving boxes ===
Moving fast can be essential to defend alien attacks in time. Running on a belt will increase or decrease the movement speed of the player accordingly to the belts speed. That is why building a belt towards your defenses can be beneficial.

However, the player is not the only unit that can be moved by transport belts. Also, biters and spitters can be moved. This can be abused to improve your defense. Firstly biters will have a harder time to reach your walls when placing express transport belt in front of them. Secondly spitters can be moved closer to your walls. That way more turrets can attack a single spitter at once.

Another useful usage are cars on transport belts. Cars have an inventory and can be filled by inserters. So they can be used as moving boxes on belt. This has several advantages: Firstly the throughput of the belt-car-boxes is amazingly high, secondly the inserter stack size bonus does apply here and make inserters more effective.

[[File:Transport_belts_movement.gif|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_defence.jpg|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_carboxes.gif|400px|top]]

== Expert ==
This section needs cleanup. It contains all links from deleted subpages or duplicate articles.
* [[Transport network]]
** [[Transport belts]]
** [[Splitters]]
** [[Underground belts]]
* [[Transport]]
* [[Crafting network]]
* [[Logistic network]]
* [[Transport network]]
** [[Splitters]]
** [[Underground belts]]
* [[Transport]]
* [[Crafting network]]
* [[Logistic network]]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3370 Intersection with 4 belts from every side]
* [[Transport belts/Transport other entities]]: even the car can be transported with belts.
* [[Transport belts/Why do belts use no energy?|Why do belts not require power?]]: Some reasons...
* [[Transport belts/Speedup Walking]]: Walk/run in belt direction add the speed of the belt to your own.
* [[Transport belts/Defense]]: Use the Express belt to slow down the enemies
* [[Transport belts/Physics]]
* [[Transport belts/Turns]]
* [[Transport belts/Blocking items]]
* [[Transport belts/Side insert]]
* [[Transport belts/Optimizing|Transport belt Optimising]]
* [[Transport belts/Side insert]]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6914&p=56388#p56388 Throughput and bottlenecks].
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5316&start=20#p54495 Speed, Distance, Throughput, Compression]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7221 Tutorial for Belt Speed, Density and Throughput]
* [[Transport belts/Belt lane]] for more about usage of the two lanes of a belt.
* [[Transport belts/Optimizing|Transport belt Optimising]]
* [[Transport belts/Turns]] for details about turns.
* [[Transport belts/Optimizing| Transport belt Optimising]] about other ways to speed up this bottleneck.
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6801&p=54025#p54003 Testing fast belt corners] (interesting video)
* [[Underground belts/More uses]]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=148 Three belts in two tile-lines]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4596 Two belts in one tile-line]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3211&p=23636#p23636 Join two lanes into one]

* [[Splitters/Priority]]: splitter prefers one side for joining in most cases.
* [[Splitters/When is a faster splitter needed?]]: a basic splitter can keep up with the input of one fast belt, if the two output belts are connected and empty.
* See example usages [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1808 in this thread].
* [[Splitters/Weighted splitters]]: Use splitter to achive special ratios on the outputs [[File:Factorio ratios.jpg|thumb|256px|[[Splitters/Weighted splitters]]]]
** [[Splitters/Cascading]]: Use Cascading to fill storages only, when not needed otherwise
* [[Splitters/Balancer]]: use the two lanes of a belt.
* [[Splitters/Joining]]: more explained
* [[Splitters/Wormhole Trick]]: an empty splitter transports items faster, they disappears on input side and dive up on output side, "jumping" over about half a [[Tile|tile]]. It is questionable, how this behavior could be used. A good usage is to make something like a "micro-buffer", or a "spread-buffer" with that, because a line of 10 splitters can store about 60 items - a half stack - and the first items are delivered very fast, but the last items have the normal belt speed to move through the splitters; so the items are spread on the belts. See also '''[http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9068 Splitters as the bus - The Splitter Bus]
* [[Splitters/Constructions]]: Examples of using.
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=897 || Using belts for defense]

{{MachineNav}}

[[Category: Transport network]] [[Category: Belt transport system]]

Belt transport system

2016-05-06T13:12:20Z

Maelstrominabox: /* Speed, Density and Throughput: About finding bottlenecks */ removed the "you" and "we" in first paragraph by rearranging sentences

{{Languages}}
[[File:Belt-system-1.png|thumb|256px|Transport belts(#1) move items, Splitters (#2) distribute the input onto both outputs 1:1, Underground belts (#3) are used to bypass obstacles.]]
The belt transport system is the first transport system available in Factorio, and together with [[Railway|Trains]] and [[Logistic network|Logistics Robots]] make up the backbone of any Factorio base. Transport belts (sometimes called conveyors) are used to transport [[Items]]. Belts don't need power for transportation. This is one of the many [[Mysteries of the Factorio World]].

== Beginner ==
{| class="wikitable"
! [[Transport belts]] !! [[Underground belts]] !! [[Splitters]] !! Speed ([[tile]]s/[[Game-second|second]]) !! Needed research
|-
| {{imagelink|basic-transport-belt|Basic transport belt}}
| {{imagelink|basic-transport-belt-to-ground|Basic underground belt}}
| {{imagelink|basic-splitter|Basic splitter}}
| ~1.8
| [[Logistics 1]] Basic underground belt and Basic splitter
|-
| {{imagelink|fast-transport-belt|Fast transport belt}}
| {{imagelink|fast-transport-belt-to-ground|Fast underground belt}}
| {{imagelink|fast-splitter|Fast splitter}}
| ~3.6
| [[Logistics 2]]
|-
| {{imagelink|express-transport-belt|Express transport belt}}
| {{imagelink|express-transport-belt-to-ground|Express underground belt}}
| {{imagelink|express-splitter|Express splitter}}
| ~5.6
| [[Logistics 3]]
|-
|}

Transport belts just move items. To take items from/put items onto a belt, use [[Inserter]]s.

=== Differences between the belt tiers ===
The main difference between different tiers of belt is the speed at which they operate. As a belt is upgraded from yellow to red to blue, it gets faster and is able to move more items. The [[Transport belts/Physics|Physics]] page has some technical information on exact values for each tier of transport belt.

=== Merging and un-merging ===
Belts have '''two lanes''' that can be used for transporting. This allows for either a double flow of one material, or with some careful setup, transporting two different materials on the same belt. Mixed belts can be beneficial for smelting ore, or producing items with many different ingredients such as the science pack 3.
Un-merging a mixed belt is fairly easy too, since an underground belt will block half of your belt. So there is no reason to be afraid of mixed belts at all.

[[File:Transport_belts_merge.gif|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_unmerge.gif|300px|top]]

=== Balancing belts ===
Sometimes one side of a belt will be more empty than the other. In this case, rebalancing the belt can be helpful.

The left design will only rebalance equally if one side of the belt is empty while the right version always balances equally.

[[File:Transport_belts_balance1.gif|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_balance2.gif|300px|top]]

[https://i.imgur.com/jKRaZEl.jpg Another example, including side balancing] credit /u/Bhoedda from reddit

== Advanced ==
=== Speed, Density and Throughput: About finding bottlenecks ===
Maximizing the throughput is important, since it will keep belts efficient. Therefore some definitions need to be introduced:

; Speed
: How fast does a belt move.
; Density
: How tight are the items put on the belts.
; Throughput
: This is speed * density. It describes how many items pass by in a given time.

So there are two opportunities to enhance the throughput:

; More density
:Sometimes items have little spaces next to each other that aren't big enough for other items to fit in. In this case reordering the items can still increase the density. This can be done by temporary increasing the belt speed on a single tile or by merging 2 lanes with an inserter.

[[File:Transport_belts_density.gif|top|300px]]

; More speed
:In case your belts already are at maximum density you can still upgrade your speed with better belts. But first you have to find the bottleneck.
The bottleneck can be seen quite easy, if there is a part of a belt, where the items sometimes stop or don't move (or don't move fast) at maximum density and suddenly they come to a point, where this 'stop and go' releases itself and they run free and are not so tight on the belt. This is in most cases the exact place, where you need to optimize your belts.

=== Belts ===
[[File:Transport_belts_speed.gif|300px|thumb|right|Animation showing the three types of belt and their speed (from top to bottom: regular belts, fast belts and express belts).]]
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! scope="col" | Type
! scope="col" | Max. throughput ([[Items]] per [[game-second]])
! scope="col" | Speed ([[Tile|Tiles]] per [[game-second]])
! scope="col" | Max. density ([[Items]] per [[Tile|tile]])
! scope="col" | Required [[Research|technologies]]
|-
| {{imagelink|basic-transport-belt|Basic transport belt}} || 13.393* || 1.875* || 7.143* || none
|-
| {{imagelink|fast-transport-belt|Fast transport belt}} || 26.786* || 3.750* || 7.143* || [[Logistics 2]]
|-
| {{imagelink|express-transport-belt|Express transport belt}} || 40.179* || 5.625* || 7.143* || [[Logistics 3]]
|}
 * experimental value: See '''[[Transport_belt_experiments|Transport belt experiments]]''' for more detailed information.

=== Splitters ===
[[File:Mpstark-1vrKld4.gif]]
[[File:Mpstark-A60nIbv.gif]]
[[File:Mpstark-JNNFTUC.gif]]

The behavior of splitters looks simple at first glance. But they are not that simple. Splitters have an astonishing amount of uses.

* splitters have two input-belt-sides and two output-belt-sides on which you can connect any [[Transport belts|belt]] or [[Underground belts|underground belt]]
* splitters '''don't shuffle the lanes on the belts'''; items on the left input [[Transport belts/Belt lane|belt lane]] don't change the side to the right lane (and vice versa).
* '''Splitting'''
** if two output-belts are connected, then every input-item is put alternated on one of the two output-belts. Or in other words: it is guaranteed, that the inputed items are output in a ratio of 50% on each belt.
** if one of the output [[Transport belts/Belt lane|belt lanes]] are full, then it tries to output on the other output belt. This is useful to fill belts.
** a lot more details about the exact splitting can be found here http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3765 and here http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=511&p=3019 !
* '''Joining''' [[File:T&T Belt04.jpg|thumb|200px|Feeding from side is only a good use, if you want to make a queue - e. g. for mines, some output-buffer]] [[File:T&T Belt03.jpg|thumb|200px|Better: The capacity of the output belt is fully used.]]
** splitters can be used to join two belts into one. This has a much higher throughput than only side-inserting.
** as with splitting, the belt lanes aren't mixed up.
** Use faster splitter if you want to feed into a faster belt, because otherwise your splitter is the bottleneck!

=== Underground belts ===
[[File:Split-swap.png|thumb|256px|You can turn the order of the lanes or split the lanes completely with the underground belts trick]]

Underground belts can be used to cross different flows of items without interfering. They move items like a [[Transport belts|normal belt]].

* You can cross any number of entities and all types of ground, like water, swamps, etc. (input and output of course over water)
* You can cross other underground stuff (any number of underground belts or underground pipes). They won't be mixed.
* For the connection only the endpoints (entry-side and exit-side) are relevant.
* The maximum distance underground is 5 [[tile]]s.
* An underground belt pair with a blocked output stores up to 20 items. (Per lane? Untested!)
* If you mine an underground belt, up to 20 items are recovered, the remaining items in the underground are placed into your inventory.
* The half of the underground belt tile with a belt can accept input from the side. The other half (with a tunnel entrance) blocks incoming items.

This last fact is important, because it can be used to do some tricks.

=== Moving other Entities: About highways, advanced defenses and moving boxes ===
Moving fast can be essential to defend alien attacks in time. Running on a belt will increase or decrease the movement speed of the player accordingly to the belts speed. That is why building a belt towards your defenses can be beneficial.

However, the player is not the only unit that can be moved by transport belts. Also, biters and spitters can be moved. This can be abused to improve your defense. Firstly biters will have a harder time to reach your walls when placing express transport belt in front of them. Secondly spitters can be moved closer to your walls. That way more turrets can attack a single spitter at once.

Another useful usage are cars on transport belts. Cars have an inventory and can be filled by inserters. So they can be used as moving boxes on belt. This has several advantages: Firstly the throughput of the belt-car-boxes is amazingly high, secondly the inserter stack size bonus does apply here and make inserters more effective.

[[File:Transport_belts_movement.gif|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_defence.jpg|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_carboxes.gif|400px|top]]

== Expert ==
This section needs cleanup. It contains all links from deleted subpages or duplicate articles.
* [[Transport network]]
** [[Transport belts]]
** [[Splitters]]
** [[Underground belts]]
* [[Transport]]
* [[Crafting network]]
* [[Logistic network]]
* [[Transport network]]
** [[Splitters]]
** [[Underground belts]]
* [[Transport]]
* [[Crafting network]]
* [[Logistic network]]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3370 Intersection with 4 belts from every side]
* [[Transport belts/Transport other entities]]: even the car can be transported with belts.
* [[Transport belts/Why do belts use no energy?|Why do belts not require power?]]: Some reasons...
* [[Transport belts/Speedup Walking]]: Walk/run in belt direction add the speed of the belt to your own.
* [[Transport belts/Defense]]: Use the Express belt to slow down the enemies
* [[Transport belts/Physics]]
* [[Transport belts/Turns]]
* [[Transport belts/Blocking items]]
* [[Transport belts/Side insert]]
* [[Transport belts/Optimizing|Transport belt Optimising]]
* [[Transport belts/Side insert]]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6914&p=56388#p56388 Throughput and bottlenecks].
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5316&start=20#p54495 Speed, Distance, Throughput, Compression]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7221 Tutorial for Belt Speed, Density and Throughput]
* [[Transport belts/Belt lane]] for more about usage of the two lanes of a belt.
* [[Transport belts/Optimizing|Transport belt Optimising]]
* [[Transport belts/Turns]] for details about turns.
* [[Transport belts/Optimizing| Transport belt Optimising]] about other ways to speed up this bottleneck.
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6801&p=54025#p54003 Testing fast belt corners] (interesting video)
* [[Underground belts/More uses]]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=148 Three belts in two tile-lines]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4596 Two belts in one tile-line]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3211&p=23636#p23636 Join two lanes into one]

* [[Splitters/Priority]]: splitter prefers one side for joining in most cases.
* [[Splitters/When is a faster splitter needed?]]: a basic splitter can keep up with the input of one fast belt, if the two output belts are connected and empty.
* See example usages [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1808 in this thread].
* [[Splitters/Weighted splitters]]: Use splitter to achive special ratios on the outputs [[File:Factorio ratios.jpg|thumb|256px|[[Splitters/Weighted splitters]]]]
** [[Splitters/Cascading]]: Use Cascading to fill storages only, when not needed otherwise
* [[Splitters/Balancer]]: use the two lanes of a belt.
* [[Splitters/Joining]]: more explained
* [[Splitters/Wormhole Trick]]: an empty splitter transports items faster, they disappears on input side and dive up on output side, "jumping" over about half a [[Tile|tile]]. It is questionable, how this behavior could be used. A good usage is to make something like a "micro-buffer", or a "spread-buffer" with that, because a line of 10 splitters can store about 60 items - a half stack - and the first items are delivered very fast, but the last items have the normal belt speed to move through the splitters; so the items are spread on the belts. See also '''[http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9068 Splitters as the bus - The Splitter Bus]
* [[Splitters/Constructions]]: Examples of using.
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=897 || Using belts for defense]

{{MachineNav}}

[[Category: Transport network]] [[Category: Belt transport system]]

Belt transport system

2016-05-06T13:07:19Z

Maelstrominabox: /* Beginner */ minor grammar & spelling changes

{{Languages}}
[[File:Belt-system-1.png|thumb|256px|Transport belts(#1) move items, Splitters (#2) distribute the input onto both outputs 1:1, Underground belts (#3) are used to bypass obstacles.]]
The belt transport system is the first transport system available in Factorio, and together with [[Railway|Trains]] and [[Logistic network|Logistics Robots]] make up the backbone of any Factorio base. Transport belts (sometimes called conveyors) are used to transport [[Items]]. Belts don't need power for transportation. This is one of the many [[Mysteries of the Factorio World]].

== Beginner ==
{| class="wikitable"
! [[Transport belts]] !! [[Underground belts]] !! [[Splitters]] !! Speed ([[tile]]s/[[Game-second|second]]) !! Needed research
|-
| {{imagelink|basic-transport-belt|Basic transport belt}}
| {{imagelink|basic-transport-belt-to-ground|Basic underground belt}}
| {{imagelink|basic-splitter|Basic splitter}}
| ~1.8
| [[Logistics 1]] Basic underground belt and Basic splitter
|-
| {{imagelink|fast-transport-belt|Fast transport belt}}
| {{imagelink|fast-transport-belt-to-ground|Fast underground belt}}
| {{imagelink|fast-splitter|Fast splitter}}
| ~3.6
| [[Logistics 2]]
|-
| {{imagelink|express-transport-belt|Express transport belt}}
| {{imagelink|express-transport-belt-to-ground|Express underground belt}}
| {{imagelink|express-splitter|Express splitter}}
| ~5.6
| [[Logistics 3]]
|-
|}

Transport belts just move items. To take items from/put items onto a belt, use [[Inserter]]s.

=== Differences between the belt tiers ===
The main difference between different tiers of belt is the speed at which they operate. As a belt is upgraded from yellow to red to blue, it gets faster and is able to move more items. The [[Transport belts/Physics|Physics]] page has some technical information on exact values for each tier of transport belt.

=== Merging and un-merging ===
Belts have '''two lanes''' that can be used for transporting. This allows for either a double flow of one material, or with some careful setup, transporting two different materials on the same belt. Mixed belts can be beneficial for smelting ore, or producing items with many different ingredients such as the science pack 3.
Un-merging a mixed belt is fairly easy too, since an underground belt will block half of your belt. So there is no reason to be afraid of mixed belts at all.

[[File:Transport_belts_merge.gif|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_unmerge.gif|300px|top]]

=== Balancing belts ===
Sometimes one side of a belt will be more empty than the other. In this case, rebalancing the belt can be helpful.

The left design will only rebalance equally if one side of the belt is empty while the right version always balances equally.

[[File:Transport_belts_balance1.gif|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_balance2.gif|300px|top]]

[https://i.imgur.com/jKRaZEl.jpg Another example, including side balancing] credit /u/Bhoedda from reddit

== Advanced ==
=== Speed, Density and Throughput: About finding bottlenecks ===
Maximizing the throughput is important, since it will keep your belts efficient. Therefore we need to introduce some definitions:

; Speed
: How fast does a belt move.
; Density
: How tight are the items put on the belts.
; Throughput
: This is speed * density. It describes how many items pass by in a given time.

So there are two opportunities to enhance the throughput:

; More density
:Sometimes items have little spaces next to each other that aren't big enough for other items to fit in. In this case reordering the items can still increase the density. This can be done by temporary increasing the belt speed on a single tile or by merging 2 lanes with an inserter.

[[File:Transport_belts_density.gif|top|300px]]

; More speed
:In case your belts already are at maximum density you can still upgrade your speed with better belts. But first you have to find the bottleneck.
The bottleneck can be seen quite easy, if there is a part of a belt, where the items sometimes stop or don't move (or don't move fast) at maximum density and suddenly they come to a point, where this 'stop and go' releases itself and they run free and are not so tight on the belt. This is in most cases the exact place, where you need to optimize your belts.

=== Belts ===
[[File:Transport_belts_speed.gif|300px|thumb|right|Animation showing the three types of belt and their speed (from top to bottom: regular belts, fast belts and express belts).]]
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! scope="col" | Type
! scope="col" | Max. throughput ([[Items]] per [[game-second]])
! scope="col" | Speed ([[Tile|Tiles]] per [[game-second]])
! scope="col" | Max. density ([[Items]] per [[Tile|tile]])
! scope="col" | Required [[Research|technologies]]
|-
| {{imagelink|basic-transport-belt|Basic transport belt}} || 13.393* || 1.875* || 7.143* || none
|-
| {{imagelink|fast-transport-belt|Fast transport belt}} || 26.786* || 3.750* || 7.143* || [[Logistics 2]]
|-
| {{imagelink|express-transport-belt|Express transport belt}} || 40.179* || 5.625* || 7.143* || [[Logistics 3]]
|}
 * experimental value: See '''[[Transport_belt_experiments|Transport belt experiments]]''' for more detailed information.

=== Splitters ===
[[File:Mpstark-1vrKld4.gif]]
[[File:Mpstark-A60nIbv.gif]]
[[File:Mpstark-JNNFTUC.gif]]

The behavior of splitters looks simple at first glance. But they are not that simple. Splitters have an astonishing amount of uses.

* splitters have two input-belt-sides and two output-belt-sides on which you can connect any [[Transport belts|belt]] or [[Underground belts|underground belt]]
* splitters '''don't shuffle the lanes on the belts'''; items on the left input [[Transport belts/Belt lane|belt lane]] don't change the side to the right lane (and vice versa).
* '''Splitting'''
** if two output-belts are connected, then every input-item is put alternated on one of the two output-belts. Or in other words: it is guaranteed, that the inputed items are output in a ratio of 50% on each belt.
** if one of the output [[Transport belts/Belt lane|belt lanes]] are full, then it tries to output on the other output belt. This is useful to fill belts.
** a lot more details about the exact splitting can be found here http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3765 and here http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=511&p=3019 !
* '''Joining''' [[File:T&T Belt04.jpg|thumb|200px|Feeding from side is only a good use, if you want to make a queue - e. g. for mines, some output-buffer]] [[File:T&T Belt03.jpg|thumb|200px|Better: The capacity of the output belt is fully used.]]
** splitters can be used to join two belts into one. This has a much higher throughput than only side-inserting.
** as with splitting, the belt lanes aren't mixed up.
** Use faster splitter if you want to feed into a faster belt, because otherwise your splitter is the bottleneck!

=== Underground belts ===
[[File:Split-swap.png|thumb|256px|You can turn the order of the lanes or split the lanes completely with the underground belts trick]]

Underground belts can be used to cross different flows of items without interfering. They move items like a [[Transport belts|normal belt]].

* You can cross any number of entities and all types of ground, like water, swamps, etc. (input and output of course over water)
* You can cross other underground stuff (any number of underground belts or underground pipes). They won't be mixed.
* For the connection only the endpoints (entry-side and exit-side) are relevant.
* The maximum distance underground is 5 [[tile]]s.
* An underground belt pair with a blocked output stores up to 20 items. (Per lane? Untested!)
* If you mine an underground belt, up to 20 items are recovered, the remaining items in the underground are placed into your inventory.
* The half of the underground belt tile with a belt can accept input from the side. The other half (with a tunnel entrance) blocks incoming items.

This last fact is important, because it can be used to do some tricks.

=== Moving other Entities: About highways, advanced defenses and moving boxes ===
Moving fast can be essential to defend alien attacks in time. Running on a belt will increase or decrease the movement speed of the player accordingly to the belts speed. That is why building a belt towards your defenses can be beneficial.

However, the player is not the only unit that can be moved by transport belts. Also, biters and spitters can be moved. This can be abused to improve your defense. Firstly biters will have a harder time to reach your walls when placing express transport belt in front of them. Secondly spitters can be moved closer to your walls. That way more turrets can attack a single spitter at once.

Another useful usage are cars on transport belts. Cars have an inventory and can be filled by inserters. So they can be used as moving boxes on belt. This has several advantages: Firstly the throughput of the belt-car-boxes is amazingly high, secondly the inserter stack size bonus does apply here and make inserters more effective.

[[File:Transport_belts_movement.gif|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_defence.jpg|300px|top]]   [[File:Transport_belts_carboxes.gif|400px|top]]

== Expert ==
This section needs cleanup. It contains all links from deleted subpages or duplicate articles.
* [[Transport network]]
** [[Transport belts]]
** [[Splitters]]
** [[Underground belts]]
* [[Transport]]
* [[Crafting network]]
* [[Logistic network]]
* [[Transport network]]
** [[Splitters]]
** [[Underground belts]]
* [[Transport]]
* [[Crafting network]]
* [[Logistic network]]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3370 Intersection with 4 belts from every side]
* [[Transport belts/Transport other entities]]: even the car can be transported with belts.
* [[Transport belts/Why do belts use no energy?|Why do belts not require power?]]: Some reasons...
* [[Transport belts/Speedup Walking]]: Walk/run in belt direction add the speed of the belt to your own.
* [[Transport belts/Defense]]: Use the Express belt to slow down the enemies
* [[Transport belts/Physics]]
* [[Transport belts/Turns]]
* [[Transport belts/Blocking items]]
* [[Transport belts/Side insert]]
* [[Transport belts/Optimizing|Transport belt Optimising]]
* [[Transport belts/Side insert]]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6914&p=56388#p56388 Throughput and bottlenecks].
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5316&start=20#p54495 Speed, Distance, Throughput, Compression]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7221 Tutorial for Belt Speed, Density and Throughput]
* [[Transport belts/Belt lane]] for more about usage of the two lanes of a belt.
* [[Transport belts/Optimizing|Transport belt Optimising]]
* [[Transport belts/Turns]] for details about turns.
* [[Transport belts/Optimizing| Transport belt Optimising]] about other ways to speed up this bottleneck.
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6801&p=54025#p54003 Testing fast belt corners] (interesting video)
* [[Underground belts/More uses]]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=148 Three belts in two tile-lines]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4596 Two belts in one tile-line]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3211&p=23636#p23636 Join two lanes into one]

* [[Splitters/Priority]]: splitter prefers one side for joining in most cases.
* [[Splitters/When is a faster splitter needed?]]: a basic splitter can keep up with the input of one fast belt, if the two output belts are connected and empty.
* See example usages [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1808 in this thread].
* [[Splitters/Weighted splitters]]: Use splitter to achive special ratios on the outputs [[File:Factorio ratios.jpg|thumb|256px|[[Splitters/Weighted splitters]]]]
** [[Splitters/Cascading]]: Use Cascading to fill storages only, when not needed otherwise
* [[Splitters/Balancer]]: use the two lanes of a belt.
* [[Splitters/Joining]]: more explained
* [[Splitters/Wormhole Trick]]: an empty splitter transports items faster, they disappears on input side and dive up on output side, "jumping" over about half a [[Tile|tile]]. It is questionable, how this behavior could be used. A good usage is to make something like a "micro-buffer", or a "spread-buffer" with that, because a line of 10 splitters can store about 60 items - a half stack - and the first items are delivered very fast, but the last items have the normal belt speed to move through the splitters; so the items are spread on the belts. See also '''[http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9068 Splitters as the bus - The Splitter Bus]
* [[Splitters/Constructions]]: Examples of using.
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=897 || Using belts for defense]

{{MachineNav}}

[[Category: Transport network]] [[Category: Belt transport system]]

Tutorial:Quick start guide

2016-05-05T16:04:55Z

Maelstrominabox: /* More automation */ fixed spelling & grammar errors, added links to internal pages

{{Languages}}
== Getting Started ==
So you've just picked up Factorio, played through the tutorial and now have no clue what to do? Not a problem. Let's try to ease you into the game a little bit.

=== Starting Your Game ===
To begin you are going to be presented with the main menu. You'll have run into one of these before.

You want to select "Play" and "New Game." You will be presented with a nice big menu for [[Game/World generator|customization of your world]]. The default settings are fine for a first play through.

==== World Generator ====

You can fiddle with these options to make the [[Game/World generator|world generate]] how you want it to. These options can greatly affect the difficulty of your world.

Each resource type, along with enemy bases, is controlled by 3 values: frequency, size and richness.
* Frequency relates to how often you'll see ore veins or enemy bases within the game world
* Size relates to how large these veins or bases are
* Richness relates to how many resources ore tiles will produce before running dry, and how dense enemy bases are

For an easier beginner experience, set the frequency of iron ore, copper ore, stone, coal, and crude oil to "Very High" and the richness of "Very Good." This will ensure you have plenty of resources available, and that you will not have to venture far from your starting area to find resources. You may also want to set the size of enemy bases to "Very Small" to lower the number of enemies.

If you want to know more about the world generator, [[Game/World generator|read this article.]]

==== Peaceful Mode ====

If you want to enjoy building and not be bothered by enemies, check the "peaceful mode" option. Enemies will still spawn, but they'll stay where they are until you go to them.

Once you have changed any options you want to change, press "Generate." A new world will be generated, your player will spawn, and you're ready to play!

===Useful Key Bindings===

While most of the controls and key combinations can be found in the controls of the game options, many people tend not to look there. Here are the essentials:
{{:Game/Keyboard bindings}}
Please refer to [[Game/Keyboard bindings]] to know more about keybindings and how to configure them.

== The very first moments ==

=== Resources ===

Make sure that you have these four resources close to your spawn location. You want to have [[Coal]], [[Copper ore]], [[Iron ore]], and [[Stone]] within a reasonable proximity to each other; the farther apart they are the harder it will be to use them together (trust us, they will be used together).

If your spawn area doesn't hold one of these resources, or they are too scarce or too far apart, simply hit the Escape key and choose "Restart." This will re-generate game world and you will spawn in a new starting location.

Later we will also need [[Water]], and much later we will also need [[Crude Oil]]. However, these two, being liquids, are much easier to transport over distance than the four solid resources. It's OK if your starting area doesn't have immediate access to water or oil.

Everything in Factorio is made from these six basic resources, which is why the game will be more difficult if your starting location does not have easy access to most of them (especially the four solid resources).

=== Craft a pickaxe ===

Go towards whichever resource you choose and hold right click. This will give you a small progress bar at the bottom, which when complete will give you some of those resources. You might find that chopping trees and mining ores manually is really slow. If you look at your character, he's just bashing at them with a stick! How about a tool upgrade? Press E to open up your inventory and the crafting menu. Select the gears tab up the top for "Production", and left click on the iron pickaxe in there. This will increase your mining speed by a significant amount.

=== Placing mines and furnaces ===

You begin your journey with a humble [[Stone Furnace]] and a [[Burner Mining Drill]]. What do we do with these?
First of all, you should place your [[Mining drill|drill]] on the edge of an iron deposit, facing towards a [[Furnace]].

You can change the direction of the Drill by either pressing "R" before you place it, or after by hovering over it with the mouse and pressing "R". The little yellow arrow shows where the mined iron ore will come out. You want the Furnace to be in front of that arrow, so that the drill automatically inputs into the furnace. You should get something like this.
:[[File:SimpleOre.PNG|center|thumb]]

'''Remember to press "ALT" to activate the detailed view.''' This makes it easier to see what is inputting what into where.

=== Feeding with fuel ===
Great! But what does the big flashing red symbol mean? Well, there isn't any '''[[Fuel]]''' in the drill or the furnace.

You can power them with either [[Wood]] or [[Coal]]. To collect them, you'll need to cut trees or mine coal, with right click.

Assuming that you now have a pickaxe and have found some fuel, it's about time we went and made the furnace and drill start working for you. By left clicking on the furnace or drill, their interface will open.
:[[File:Interface.PNG|center|thumb|upright=4]]
To place your fuel into the machine, simply left click it to pick it up and left click again to put it into the fuel slot.

If you want to split a '''[[Storage/Stack|stack]]''' in half, so that your furnace and drill can both get half of your fuel, right click the stack in your inventory and then place it in the fuel slot. Easy as that! Now both of your machines should be running and automatically making you some iron plates! Try also CTRL-left click: this will feed half of the stack you're holding into the machine.

You can use an identical setup for copper ore to get copper plates.

== Production upgrade! ==

You know what's better than iron plates? ''More'' iron plates! Why don't we go ahead and get them?

You'll need to craft some extra drills. If you hover over drill in the crafting menu, you'll see two lists of materials. The first list shows the components needed to make the drill; the second one at the very bottom of the tooltip window shows the raw resources needed to craft it.
Unlike other games, you do not need to create the pre-requisite items before you select the item you want to make. All required items are crafted for you.
You can see this process happening on the bottom left of the screen, where your Crafting Queue is.
You can also queue up more crafting orders, as long as you have the necessary materials on you, and they'll get carried out one after the other.
:[[File:Recipe.PNG|center|upright=2|thumb]]
Now that you can afford some extra drill and furnaces, you should automate the acquisition of both coal and stone.
These are easy to set up and work essentially the same as the iron setup.
For Coal, you can have two drills facing each other: they'll run on the coal they get fed by their partner and you can collect the surplus.

Don't forget that you can collect resources from machines without opening their inventories, with CTRL-LMB.
You might also want to activate the detailed view, by pressing the ALT key once. You can deactivate it by pressing ALT again.

[[File:SimpleCoal.PNG|center|thumb]]

And for stone you can have the drill output directly into a chest.

Once this is all setup up, you will probably want to make it go faster. Set up more drills with furnaces for the iron, setup some for copper and maybe lay more drills on the coal to cover for the extra coal production.
In the early game, the most used resource is iron, so you'll probably need twice as many miners on iron than copper, if not more. But expect copper to become more and more important the more you mess with electricity and electronics!

=== More automation ===

Great! So now you have four or so furnaces making iron, a couple making copper, some stone production and a good amount of coal production.
But you know what really sucks? Having to run the coal around to all your other machines, right? Well let's automate that too!
Conveyor belts and inserters are the way of the future! The output slots on the drill can also output onto conveyor belts to be transported to your other machines.

[[File:CoalConveyor.PNG|center|upright=2|thumb]]

Now that we can take our coal to other places with no effort, we just need a way to input the coal into those machines.
This is where [[Inserters]] step in. In the first few stages of the game, you can use [[Burner_Inserter|Burner Inserters]] as a cheap way to move items from anything to anything. You can move objects from the ground, chests, machines and put them wherever you want.
Burner Inserters themselves require coal to run though, which makes this a little counter intuitive to have to fuel them instead of the machines you are trying to fuel anyway.
Here is a small example of inserters working. Notice that the flat line is where the inserters will pick up from, and the arrow is where they will place the item.

[[File:SimpleOreProcessing.PNG|center|upright=2|thumb]]

Okay, so now we know how to automatically mine things and then how to automatically move things from one place to another, and then to place said items into machine or out of machines.

Next up we want to get some [[electric network|electricity]] so that we can have inserters that run off that instead of fuel.

== Electrical power ==

Electricity. This is where things start to get interesting. We're going to need a single [[Offshore pump|Offshore Pump]], some boilers and a [[Steam engine|Steam Engine]]. These are really simple to set up, they just require twenty-some iron plates and 5 stone per boiler. The offshore pump goes in the water and needs no power to run. From there, you can either use pipes to transport the water to boilers, or you can run boilers straight from the pump. Boilers allow water to flow through them just like pipes do, except they also heat the water along the way and cannot be used as corners. The pipes or the boilers then connect to the middle of the short side of the steam engine. Make sure you connect it in the right place or it won't work. Moreover, steam engines allow water to run through them just like boilers, so you can have as many engine as you want connected in a row. Here is a small example.

[[File:SimpleGeneratorSetup.png|center|600px|thumb]]

Now you need to use power poles to carry power to your machines. Place some down so that their coverage area (the blue square) overlaps each steam engine in at least one square. If they are going to connect, the machines that use power will be shown with a blue outline around their edges.

If the steam engine is producing power but nothing is using it, it'll show a yellow flashing icon: right now it's showing because we don't have electric machines yet!

[[File:LonelyTurbine.PNG|center|upright=1|thumb]]

Your power setup can look however you want it to look.
A great method is to have a line of boilers that supply a certain amount of steam engines with hot water, and then you can use transport belts to bring coal to them for inserters to place inside them so that your electricity is always running.

The most often used setup is 1 offshore pump, 14 boilers and 10 steam engines. This is due to this being the best ratio between the 3 of them. 1 pump produces enough water for 10 engine, and the 14 boilers is sufficient to heat the water for that many. The example above is easily expanded into this efficient design. But hey, this game is all about experimentation and for you to be able to find ways to do your own things! So get to it, and show off your own unique designs!

[[File:steamSetupExample.png|center|upright=4|thumb|Here's my personal favorite setup. Even easier to power when medium powerpoles are available.]]

Using this power is as simple as creating a machine that runs on electricity and placing a power pole close enough to it that the blue square touches the machine, just like you have to do at the power plant with the engines. Make sure that there is a line of power poles that actually connect to your power plant.

Now that power is explained, we need to increase our resource production.

However, if you want detailed info on your power production/consumption, you can check the [[Power Production#What_can_be_seen_from_the_electric_network_info.3F|Detailed Electric Network Info]], opened by clicking on any powerpole.

== Re-thinking our resources and research ==

Next we really want to get onto automation of items, not just the smelting of ores.

Before we can get to that though, we're going to have increase our production of ores. This is where things start becoming a little tricky and there are few things you want to do at once.
We really want to be able to set the factory to make things and let it go. But for that we need some extra utilities which we don't have and need to get through [[research]].

We haven't even touched on that yet! lets start by cranking up our resource production. Now that we have electricity, we can use [[Mining Drill|Electric Mining Drills]]. These are much better than those scummy Burner ones. They work exactly the same except they are twice as fast and they don't rely on fuel, as you could guess by the names. You can have them to output your raw resources onto belts and get them to a place where you can mass process the ores into plates. Here is a small example of what you could do, but let your imagination and your calculating logic figure out other, maybe even better ways of doing it! You want ore to be split more or less evenly on each side of the belts. This helps with the amount of resources that can be carried to your base of operations on a single belt.

[[File:BasicElectricMiners.PNG|center|upright=1.5|thumb]]

This is once again easily expandable all over an iron deposit. This conveyor belt can then take all of the ore to some sort of processing area. The processing area needs some machines that we currently don't have due to limitations in our research.

Most importantly, we want the [[long handed inserter]]. This inserter is able to reach twice as far as a normal inserter! It is very useful for bringing or placing items to or from conveyor belts that are one extra tile away. So what we need to do is to make some science labs. They don't cost too many resources, but take a little while to make. Craft one or two of them and connect them to power. When you first place one, you are going to get a popup asking you want you want to research. We really want automation right now. This gives us our inserters and the Assembling machine 1, which is going to be very useful in the near future.

You'll notice that the cost for this is 10 Science Pack 1's, or "red potions" or "flasks" as some people like to call them. These are simply another crafted item, which you should craft 10 of now and place them in your labs to begin researching. While you are waiting for your flasks to craft or your research to complete, lets continue building an ore processing center. We want a line of copper, iron and coal to be available for this area. Despite being in the electric era, our furnaces still need coal until a little further down the line.

Below is another sample of how you ''could'' set up your area. There are efficient ways of making them that you might see on the forum, but if you want to learn about what they are and how they work, you can either experiment yourself or search the wiki/forum for some better designs.

[[File:OreProcessingArea.PNG|center|upright=2|thumb]]

As per usual, I leave this area with plenty of room to expand later on when demands become higher. The important parts about this is that you need the red, long handed inserters to be able to reach the coal in the middle to fuel your furnaces. You need seperate belts for your incoming raw materials to be able to be processed, and then another belt outside of them to handle the output after they have been smelted. These materials can then go straight into your base to be made into a myriad of other things. Finally, we have a steady and upgradeable supply of copper and iron plates, and we can get into further automation with the assembling machines so we can automate creation of things like Science Packs, Ammunition and every other item that the player themselves can craft, but without you involved at all!

== Automating that research ==

Ok, so a fair amount has happened. Now, to be able to progress into later parts of the game with better research we are going to want automate the process of making science packs and putting them into the labs. This way we won't have to worry about research any longer.

There are many designs that you can find on the forums, but I'll show you something simple, letting you find what works for you. I would highly recommend that you research Logistics as your next research, and in fact manually craft the science required for this. The logistic research gives you some important things: the [[splitters|splitter]], the [[underground belts|underground belt]] and the [[fast inserter]]. The splitter and underground belts are some of the most important items you'll get at this stage. They do pretty much what their names imply.

So what do science packs require? We need copper plates and iron gears. So far we have only dealt with raw resources, how do we make craftable things? The Assembler answers your prayers! If you place an assembler down and open its interface, it asks you what you would like it to craft. Once you select one, if you put the ingredients in that it requires it will craft the item and you can pull out the finished product. In the case of red science packs, we will need an assembler making iron gears, and an assembler making the actual packs. A nice way of doing this is to have a conveyor belt with 1 side containing the copper plates and the other side taking the gears from another assembler like below.

[[File:RedScienceProduction.PNG|center|thumb|upright=3]]

Now this picture uses a few neat little tricks that I will explain in detail. If you have your plate belts seperate, and you want them running side by side there can be issues with trying to grab one or the other resources from the far belt. Yes, you could use a long inserter, but in some cases you don't want this (e.g. you need a fast inserter to get resources quickly into your assemblers).

The area in red is a good way to get around this. By having a splitter, you can move the far belt from your production in close while also allowing it to continue down the line for later use. For the copper, we use an underground belt to go underneath the area that is now taken by the far line which also allows the copper to continue on. Once again, this is only one possible method of doing things and you are in no way obligated to follow it.

The area in blue is a quick way to allow copper to continue down the main line, while also splitting some off for our red science assemblers. Notice how when it joins the line that the gears are on, they only join the bottom side of the belt. The little extra belt that I added to the left stops the belt from becoming a turn, and therefore makes the items only join the side I want them to. The rest is simple: the gears and copper get pulled into the assemblers, they make the science and then it gets pulled out again on the other side. These flasks can then be transported to some labs to automatically do your research for you, for example like this:

[[File:SmallScience.PNG|center|thumb|upright=3]]

== See also ==

* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7765 Newbie Tips?]

Tutorial:Quick start guide

2016-05-05T13:51:14Z

Maelstrominabox: spelling error fixed changed product to produce

{{Languages}}
== Getting Started ==
So you've just picked up Factorio, played through the tutorial and now have no clue what to do? Not a problem. Let's try to ease you into the game a little bit.

=== Starting Your Game ===
To begin you are going to be presented with the main menu. You'll have run into one of these before.

You want to select "Play" and "New Game." You will be presented with a nice big menu for [[Game/World generator|customization of your world]]. The default settings are fine for a first play through.

==== World Generator ====

You can fiddle with these options to make the [[Game/World generator|world generate]] how you want it to. These options can greatly affect the difficulty of your world.

Each resource type, along with enemy bases, is controlled by 3 values: frequency, size and richness.
* Frequency relates to how often you'll see ore veins or enemy bases within the game world
* Size relates to how large these veins or bases are
* Richness relates to how many resources ore tiles will produce before running dry, and how dense enemy bases are

For an easier beginner experience, set the frequency of iron ore, copper ore, stone, coal, and crude oil to "Very High" and the richness of "Very Good." This will ensure you have plenty of resources available, and that you will not have to venture far from your starting area to find resources. You may also want to set the size of enemy bases to "Very Small" to lower the number of enemies.

If you want to know more about the world generator, [[Game/World generator|read this article.]]

==== Peaceful Mode ====

If you want to enjoy building and not be bothered by enemies, check the "peaceful mode" option. Enemies will still spawn, but they'll stay where they are until you go to them.

Once you have changed any options you want to change, press "Generate." A new world will be generated, your player will spawn, and you're ready to play!

===Useful Key Bindings===

While most of the controls and key combinations can be found in the controls of the game options, many people tend not to look there. Here are the essentials:
{{:Game/Keyboard bindings}}
Please refer to [[Game/Keyboard bindings]] to know more about keybindings and how to configure them.

== The very first moments ==

=== Resources ===

Make sure that you have these four resources close to your spawn location. You want to have [[Coal]], [[Copper ore]], [[Iron ore]], and [[Stone]] within a reasonable proximity to each other; the farther apart they are the harder it will be to use them together (trust us, they will be used together).

If your spawn area doesn't hold one of these resources, or they are too scarce or too far apart, simply hit the Escape key and choose "Restart." This will re-generate game world and you will spawn in a new starting location.

Later we will also need [[Water]], and much later we will also need [[Crude Oil]]. However, these two, being liquids, are much easier to transport over distance than the four solid resources. It's OK if your starting area doesn't have immediate access to water or oil.

Everything in Factorio is made from these six basic resources, which is why the game will be more difficult if your starting location does not have easy access to most of them (especially the four solid resources).

=== Craft a pickaxe ===

Go towards whichever resource you choose and hold right click. This will give you a small progress bar at the bottom, which when complete will give you some of those resources. You might find that chopping trees and mining ores manually is really slow. If you look at your character, he's just bashing at them with a stick! How about a tool upgrade? Press E to open up your inventory and the crafting menu. Select the gears tab up the top for "Production", and left click on the iron pickaxe in there. This will increase your mining speed by a significant amount.

=== Placing mines and furnaces ===

You begin your journey with a humble [[Stone Furnace]] and a [[Burner Mining Drill]]. What do we do with these?
First of all, you should place your [[Mining drill|drill]] on the edge of an iron deposit, facing towards a [[Furnace]].

You can change the direction of the Drill by either pressing "R" before you place it, or after by hovering over it with the mouse and pressing "R". The little yellow arrow shows where the mined iron ore will come out. You want the Furnace to be in front of that arrow, so that the drill automatically inputs into the furnace. You should get something like this.
:[[File:SimpleOre.PNG|center|thumb]]

'''Remember to press "ALT" to activate the detailed view.''' This makes it easier to see what is inputting what into where.

=== Feeding with fuel ===
Great! But what does the big flashing red symbol mean? Well, there isn't any '''[[Fuel]]''' in the drill or the furnace.

You can power them with either [[Wood]] or [[Coal]]. To collect them, you'll need to cut trees or mine coal, with right click.

Assuming that you now have a pickaxe and have found some fuel, it's about time we went and made the furnace and drill start working for you. By left clicking on the furnace or drill, their interface will open.
:[[File:Interface.PNG|center|thumb|upright=4]]
To place your fuel into the machine, simply left click it to pick it up and left click again to put it into the fuel slot.

If you want to split a '''[[Storage/Stack|stack]]''' in half, so that your furnace and drill can both get half of your fuel, right click the stack in your inventory and then place it in the fuel slot. Easy as that! Now both of your machines should be running and automatically making you some iron plates! Try also CTRL-left click: this will feed half of the stack you're holding into the machine.

You can use an identical setup for copper ore to get copper plates.

== Production upgrade! ==

You know what's better than iron plates? ''More'' iron plates! Why don't we go ahead and get them?

You'll need to craft some extra drills. If you hover over drill in the crafting menu, you'll see two lists of materials. The first list shows the components needed to make the drill; the second one at the very bottom of the tooltip window shows the raw resources needed to craft it.
Unlike other games, you do not need to create the pre-requisite items before you select the item you want to make. All required items are crafted for you.
You can see this process happening on the bottom left of the screen, where your Crafting Queue is.
You can also queue up more crafting orders, as long as you have the necessary materials on you, and they'll get carried out one after the other.
:[[File:Recipe.PNG|center|upright=2|thumb]]
Now that you can afford some extra drill and furnaces, you should automate the acquisition of both coal and stone.
These are easy to set up and work essentially the same as the iron setup.
For Coal, you can have two drills facing each other: they'll run on the coal they get fed by their partner and you can collect the surplus.

Don't forget that you can collect resources from machines without opening their inventories, with CTRL-LMB.
You might also want to activate the detailed view, by pressing the ALT key once. You can deactivate it by pressing ALT again.

[[File:SimpleCoal.PNG|center|thumb]]

And for stone you can have the drill output directly into a chest.

Once this is all setup up, you will probably want to make it go faster. Set up more drills with furnaces for the iron, setup some for copper and maybe lay more drills on the coal to cover for the extra coal production.
In the early game, the most used resource is iron, so you'll probably need twice as many miners on iron than copper, if not more. But expect copper to become more and more important the more you mess with electricity and electronics!

=== More automation ===

Great! So now you have four or so furnaces making iron, a couple making copper, some stone production and a good amount of coal production.
But you know what really sucks? having to run the coal around to all your other machines, right? Well let's automate that too!
Conveyor belts and inserters are the way of the future! The output slots on the drill can also output onto conveyor belts to be transported to your other machines.

[[File:CoalConveyor.PNG|center|upright=2|thumb]]

Now that we can take our coal to other places with no effort, we just need a way to input the coal into those machine.
This is where [[Inserters]] step in. In the first few stages of the game, you can use burner inserters as a cheap way to move items from anything to anything. You can move object from the ground, chests, machines and put them wherever you want.
Burner Inserters themselves require coal to run though, which makes this a little counter intuitive to have to fuel them instead of the machines you are trying to fuel anyway.
Here is a small example of inserters working. Notice that the flat line is where the inserters will pick up from, and the arrow is where they will place the item.

[[File:SimpleOreProcessing.PNG|center|upright=2|thumb]]

Okay, so now we know how to automatically mine things and then how to automatically move things from one place to another, and then to place said items into machine or out of machines.

Next up we want to get some [[electric network|electricity]] so that we can have inserters that run of that instead of fuel.

== Electrical power ==

Electricity. This is where things start to get interesting. We're going to need a single [[Offshore pump|Offshore Pump]], some boilers and a [[Steam engine|Steam Engine]]. These are really simple to set up, they just require twenty-some iron plates and 5 stone per boiler. The offshore pump goes in the water and needs no power to run. From there, you can either use pipes to transport the water to boilers, or you can run boilers straight from the pump. Boilers allow water to flow through them just like pipes do, except they also heat the water along the way and cannot be used as corners. The pipes or the boilers then connect to the middle of the short side of the steam engine. Make sure you connect it in the right place or it won't work. Moreover, steam engines allow water to run through them just like boilers, so you can have as many engine as you want connected in a row. Here is a small example.

[[File:SimpleGeneratorSetup.png|center|600px|thumb]]

Now you need to use power poles to carry power to your machines. Place some down so that their coverage area (the blue square) overlaps each steam engine in at least one square. If they are going to connect, the machines that use power will be shown with a blue outline around their edges.

If the steam engine is producing power but nothing is using it, it'll show a yellow flashing icon: right now it's showing because we don't have electric machines yet!

[[File:LonelyTurbine.PNG|center|upright=1|thumb]]

Your power setup can look however you want it to look.
A great method is to have a line of boilers that supply a certain amount of steam engines with hot water, and then you can use transport belts to bring coal to them for inserters to place inside them so that your electricity is always running.

The most often used setup is 1 offshore pump, 14 boilers and 10 steam engines. This is due to this being the best ratio between the 3 of them. 1 pump produces enough water for 10 engine, and the 14 boilers is sufficient to heat the water for that many. The example above is easily expanded into this efficient design. But hey, this game is all about experimentation and for you to be able to find ways to do your own things! So get to it, and show off your own unique designs!

[[File:steamSetupExample.png|center|upright=4|thumb|Here's my personal favorite setup. Even easier to power when medium powerpoles are available.]]

Using this power is as simple as creating a machine that runs on electricity and placing a power pole close enough to it that the blue square touches the machine, just like you have to do at the power plant with the engines. Make sure that there is a line of power poles that actually connect to your power plant.

Now that power is explained, we need to increase our resource production.

However, if you want detailed info on your power production/consumption, you can check the [[Power Production#What_can_be_seen_from_the_electric_network_info.3F|Detailed Electric Network Info]], opened by clicking on any powerpole.

== Re-thinking our resources and research ==

Next we really want to get onto automation of items, not just the smelting of ores.

Before we can get to that though, we're going to have increase our production of ores. This is where things start becoming a little tricky and there are few things you want to do at once.
We really want to be able to set the factory to make things and let it go. But for that we need some extra utilities which we don't have and need to get through [[research]].

We haven't even touched on that yet! lets start by cranking up our resource production. Now that we have electricity, we can use [[Mining Drill|Electric Mining Drills]]. These are much better than those scummy Burner ones. They work exactly the same except they are twice as fast and they don't rely on fuel, as you could guess by the names. You can have them to output your raw resources onto belts and get them to a place where you can mass process the ores into plates. Here is a small example of what you could do, but let your imagination and your calculating logic figure out other, maybe even better ways of doing it! You want ore to be split more or less evenly on each side of the belts. This helps with the amount of resources that can be carried to your base of operations on a single belt.

[[File:BasicElectricMiners.PNG|center|upright=1.5|thumb]]

This is once again easily expandable all over an iron deposit. This conveyor belt can then take all of the ore to some sort of processing area. The processing area needs some machines that we currently don't have due to limitations in our research.

Most importantly, we want the [[long handed inserter]]. This inserter is able to reach twice as far as a normal inserter! It is very useful for bringing or placing items to or from conveyor belts that are one extra tile away. So what we need to do is to make some science labs. They don't cost too many resources, but take a little while to make. Craft one or two of them and connect them to power. When you first place one, you are going to get a popup asking you want you want to research. We really want automation right now. This gives us our inserters and the Assembling machine 1, which is going to be very useful in the near future.

You'll notice that the cost for this is 10 Science Pack 1's, or "red potions" or "flasks" as some people like to call them. These are simply another crafted item, which you should craft 10 of now and place them in your labs to begin researching. While you are waiting for your flasks to craft or your research to complete, lets continue building an ore processing center. We want a line of copper, iron and coal to be available for this area. Despite being in the electric era, our furnaces still need coal until a little further down the line.

Below is another sample of how you ''could'' set up your area. There are efficient ways of making them that you might see on the forum, but if you want to learn about what they are and how they work, you can either experiment yourself or search the wiki/forum for some better designs.

[[File:OreProcessingArea.PNG|center|upright=2|thumb]]

As per usual, I leave this area with plenty of room to expand later on when demands become higher. The important parts about this is that you need the red, long handed inserters to be able to reach the coal in the middle to fuel your furnaces. You need seperate belts for your incoming raw materials to be able to be processed, and then another belt outside of them to handle the output after they have been smelted. These materials can then go straight into your base to be made into a myriad of other things. Finally, we have a steady and upgradeable supply of copper and iron plates, and we can get into further automation with the assembling machines so we can automate creation of things like Science Packs, Ammunition and every other item that the player themselves can craft, but without you involved at all!

== Automating that research ==

Ok, so a fair amount has happened. Now, to be able to progress into later parts of the game with better research we are going to want automate the process of making science packs and putting them into the labs. This way we won't have to worry about research any longer.

There are many designs that you can find on the forums, but I'll show you something simple, letting you find what works for you. I would highly recommend that you research Logistics as your next research, and in fact manually craft the science required for this. The logistic research gives you some important things: the [[splitters|splitter]], the [[underground belts|underground belt]] and the [[fast inserter]]. The splitter and underground belts are some of the most important items you'll get at this stage. They do pretty much what their names imply.

So what do science packs require? We need copper plates and iron gears. So far we have only dealt with raw resources, how do we make craftable things? The Assembler answers your prayers! If you place an assembler down and open its interface, it asks you what you would like it to craft. Once you select one, if you put the ingredients in that it requires it will craft the item and you can pull out the finished product. In the case of red science packs, we will need an assembler making iron gears, and an assembler making the actual packs. A nice way of doing this is to have a conveyor belt with 1 side containing the copper plates and the other side taking the gears from another assembler like below.

[[File:RedScienceProduction.PNG|center|thumb|upright=3]]

Now this picture uses a few neat little tricks that I will explain in detail. If you have your plate belts seperate, and you want them running side by side there can be issues with trying to grab one or the other resources from the far belt. Yes, you could use a long inserter, but in some cases you don't want this (e.g. you need a fast inserter to get resources quickly into your assemblers).

The area in red is a good way to get around this. By having a splitter, you can move the far belt from your production in close while also allowing it to continue down the line for later use. For the copper, we use an underground belt to go underneath the area that is now taken by the far line which also allows the copper to continue on. Once again, this is only one possible method of doing things and you are in no way obligated to follow it.

The area in blue is a quick way to allow copper to continue down the main line, while also splitting some off for our red science assemblers. Notice how when it joins the line that the gears are on, they only join the bottom side of the belt. The little extra belt that I added to the left stops the belt from becoming a turn, and therefore makes the items only join the side I want them to. The rest is simple: the gears and copper get pulled into the assemblers, they make the science and then it gets pulled out again on the other side. These flasks can then be transported to some labs to automatically do your research for you, for example like this:

[[File:SmallScience.PNG|center|thumb|upright=3]]

== See also ==

* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7765 Newbie Tips?]