Help a newbie out please.

[Jiinxs]

1) Empty barrel - how do I use these. Im guessing you can fill them up with something/somehow.
2) I need to get lubricant, and the form I'm getting it is liquid form and that doesn't help me all that much, since I need (looks like) use a Assembling machine to put it into the belt/engine etc.
3) Basic accumulator, how do I use these? It's to store like solar energy or maybe just regular steam energy?
4) What should the temp be on my boilers and Steam engines ? And should the Performance and available Performance be filled up, like all green bars?
5) Pollution, thats the dark red on the map right? I see that it's spreading more and more around my base. What has it to say of the gameplay, does it matter in any way?
6) The different type of electric poles you can make, does it matter what type I use or are the different just the size they cover and the amount of distance you can place them?

I think that is all I need help with atm. But I will probably ask more about the game later

[robhol]

1) Empty barrel - how do I use these. Im guessing you can fill them up with something/somehow.
2) I need to get lubricant, and the form I'm getting it is liquid form and that doesn't help me all that much, since I need (looks like) use a Assembling machine to put it into the belt/engine etc.
3) Basic accumulator, how do I use these? It's to store like solar energy or maybe just regular steam energy?
4) What should the temp be on my boilers and Steam engines ? And should the Performance and available Performance be filled up, like all green bars?
5) Pollution, thats the dark red on the map right? I see that it's spreading more and more around my base. What has it to say of the gameplay, does it matter in any way?
6) The different type of electric poles you can make, does it matter what type I use or are the different just the size they cover and the amount of distance you can place them?

I think that is all I need help with atm. But I will probably ask more about the game later

1 and 2: hover the recipe and it'll tell you what kind of machine you need to make stuff. In this case, lubricant oil is piped into a... I think it's Assembler 2? The recipe for filling oil barrels is unlocked at some point along the way, I don't remember.
3: Yes. Well, any excess energy really. But most of the time it'll be solar, since steam engines output constant power anyway.
4: 100, of course. :3 One bar is how effective that steam engine CAN be (determined by temperature and water supply), the other bar is how much is currently being consumed. If it's at the top, it's time to get more power.. (also, a much simpler measure is available from just hovering ANY power pole in your network. You can also interact with it (not sure about default bind - LMB?) for more detailed info.
5: Yes. More pollution will slowly piss off all the aliens, making biter attacks etc. more common.
6: Those are pretty much the differences.

[Jiinxs]

1) Empty barrel - how do I use these. Im guessing you can fill them up with something/somehow.
2) I need to get lubricant, and the form I'm getting it is liquid form and that doesn't help me all that much, since I need (looks like) use a Assembling machine to put it into the belt/engine etc.
3) Basic accumulator, how do I use these? It's to store like solar energy or maybe just regular steam energy?
4) What should the temp be on my boilers and Steam engines ? And should the Performance and available Performance be filled up, like all green bars?
5) Pollution, thats the dark red on the map right? I see that it's spreading more and more around my base. What has it to say of the gameplay, does it matter in any way?
6) The different type of electric poles you can make, does it matter what type I use or are the different just the size they cover and the amount of distance you can place them?

I think that is all I need help with atm. But I will probably ask more about the game later

1 and 2: hover the recipe and it'll tell you what kind of machine you need to make stuff. In this case, lubricant oil is piped into a... I think it's Assembler 2? The recipe for filling oil barrels is unlocked at some point along the way, I don't remember.
3: Yes. Well, any excess energy really. But most of the time it'll be solar, since steam engines output constant power anyway.
4: 100, of course. :3 One bar is how effective that steam engine CAN be (determined by temperature and water supply), the other bar is how much is currently being consumed. If it's at the top, it's time to get more power.. (also, a much simpler measure is available from just hovering ANY power pole in your network. You can also interact with it (not sure about default bind - LMB?) for more detailed info.
5: Yes. More pollution will slowly piss off all the aliens, making biter attacks etc. more common.
6: Those are pretty much the differences.

Thanks, I didn't think about just connecting a Assembling machine to the tank. Worked like a charm.
So thats why the aliens keep attacking me hehe.

Thanks for the help

[Jiinxs]

And one more thing, smart chest? What so smart about them. As I see they are more expensive to build but hold the same amount of storage space and have less HP then Steel Chest.

[undeadnightorc]

And one more thing, smart chest? What so smart about them. As I see they are more expensive to build but hold the same amount of storage space and have less HP then Steel Chest.

They work in conjunction with smart inserters. You hook them up to each other with green or red wiring. When connected you can tell the inserters how much of what item you want in the smart chest before it stops working.

Now before you say "well, why don't I just use a regular chest and just limit the stack size to one or something?" Note that with proper wiring you can hook up multiple chests creating a logic network and that the amounts of *all* specified items stored in all of those connected chests will be added up. This can be quite handy for some situations.

[GewaltSam]

1) Empty barrel - how do I use these. Im guessing you can fill them up with something/somehow.
2) I need to get lubricant, and the form I'm getting it is liquid form and that doesn't help me all that much, since I need (looks like) use a Assembling machine to put it into the belt/engine etc.
3) Basic accumulator, how do I use these? It's to store like solar energy or maybe just regular steam energy?
4) What should the temp be on my boilers and Steam engines ? And should the Performance and available Performance be filled up, like all green bars?
5) Pollution, thats the dark red on the map right? I see that it's spreading more and more around my base. What has it to say of the gameplay, does it matter in any way?
6) The different type of electric poles you can make, does it matter what type I use or are the different just the size they cover and the amount of distance you can place them?

I think that is all I need help with atm. But I will probably ask more about the game later

1 and 2: hover the recipe and it'll tell you what kind of machine you need to make stuff. In this case, lubricant oil is piped into a... I think it's Assembler 2? The recipe for filling oil barrels is unlocked at some point along the way, I don't remember.
3: Yes. Well, any excess energy really. But most of the time it'll be solar, since steam engines output constant power anyway.
4: 100, of course. :3 One bar is how effective that steam engine CAN be (determined by temperature and water supply), the other bar is how much is currently being consumed. If it's at the top, it's time to get more power.. (also, a much simpler measure is available from just hovering ANY power pole in your network. You can also interact with it (not sure about default bind - LMB?) for more detailed info.
5: Yes. More pollution will slowly piss off all the aliens, making biter attacks etc. more common.
6: Those are pretty much the differences.

Thanks, I didn't think about just connecting a Assembling machine to the tank. Worked like a charm.
So thats why the aliens keep attacking me hehe.

Thanks for the help

Some additions:

1. Empty barrels are only really useful if you want to tap into oil that is far away from your base, so you need to transport it by train. Haven't really used it so far, most times it is easier to set up a long pipeline. It has its uses, but a tank wagon for the trains is also being worked on afaik.

3. Right now, steam engines have priority over accumulators (e.g. your engines work at night to keep the accumulators powered up - the accus are currently only for stress peaks on your electric network, like when your laser towers start firing. But there is a possible setup so that your factory gets powered with solar energy by day (and your batteries get reloaded), while at night, your accus give energy to the net. The engines will only start working when the batteries are empty or your network is too stressed. I just worked that into my 50MW factory today, and if done right, it works like a charm. It's not as difficult as it looks at first (tough it is a workaround, and the electric network hopefully gets better options for control soon).
See this link for reference: https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ailable.3F

4. You need around 1.3 boilers per engine. Maximum on one pump and pipe should be 13-14 boilers that heat 10 steam engines. You should be careful: sometimes it shows you 100% available performance while your network isn't under full capacity; that changes when more power is needed, and suddenly, you get less than 100% available performance for your engines. That means there are not enough boilers, and the water isn't at a hundred degrees for every engine. Add more boilers.

5. When pollution reaches nests, they send their biters to the source of pollution (and spawn new ones). Problem is, the more the nests get polluted, the more they'll evolve (means, they'll send out stronger biters after a while). You should be careful with that if you pollute a lot and build slow like I do The biters tend to get pretty strong after a while, and when you don't have a good defense until then, they will overrun you. I had that problem on my first freeplay factory myself, and it screwed me up badly There is a debug command for activating and deactivating peaceful mode in a running game btw; that saved a promising factory of mine once that got under strong attacks without chance of retaliation. Hit enter (look up the key in the controls if needed; standard should be enter, but it was screwed up in my controls), then type

game.peacefulmode=true for peaceful mode activated, or
game.peacefulmode=false

6. I tend to lose all that pesky small poles as soon as possible (that's right now a research I do while i don't even have green flasks automated). They have no advantages to medium poles (except maybe they're cheaper, but i pay no regard to such things ), and a good setup with big poles to transport the power and medium poles to spread it where you need it is a much cleaner setup that doesn't clutter up the map as much. But that's just my opinion

I hope you find something useful in the above

[ssilk]

Moved to help.