Factorio Forums

Here my tips for a quick start :

I put two BurnerMiningDrill front of themselves on a coal field. So, no need of chest, no need of feeding them. They feed themselves so you can have 4 stacks of coal at least : (1 in burning part, 1 in output part for each). You just have to come and CTRL+Click to collect them quickly whenever you want.

And you, what's yours advices ? (only for the starting part)

For the starting part i would recommend you simply put a Burner Miner drill on all of the resources (Coal - Iron - Copper - Stone in that order)With a chest attached of course.

Now smelt the ores until you can get power, then start automation of Iron and then Copper, you should now be beyond the ''starting'' phase

first, get 2 coal burners facing eachother as aforementioned and work to getting 4 iron burner miners feeding into furnaces and feed with wood or coal. Get a stone stone miner and a copper miner too. At the start you need a ton more iron than anything else.

When you get power you should put a ton of mining drills so you dont need to bother moving/adding more mining drills for a long time.
And with a ton I mean as much as you can get in the ore patch.

4 steps to electricity in 5 minutes or less.

1. Build a chest and place it anywhere.
2. Put burner miner into chest.
3. Target chest with mouse and hold c to destroy it.
4. Open the console and use it to get yourself everything needed for electricity.
(Optional)5. Laugh at the people who bother with early game. :p


In seriousness, I build only 3 burner miners and put them on Iron, Stone and Copper (in that order). I put furnaces directly in front of the iron and copper miners. I use logs from chopped down trees to fuel the burners and furnaces. As soon as I have enough resources for electricity I put my first electric mine on coal and use it to power my boilers. Then I upgrade everything to electricity.

Personally I put my first burner miner on iron and fuel it with wood. Because you need iron to make another drill, not coal... So I think it is weird to use your first and only drill to mine coal, which you can't even put in anything else yet besides the coal miner :p
After iron, I put my next one on coal, then copper. Then just go straight to electricity. After that I usually just have like a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio of iron to copper/coal miners. And move toward from there.

Am I really the only one who always takes the time to build a functional burner industry first? I find having at least two stone furnaces constantly smelting iron plates without any need to be supervised makes my subsequent electricity expansion much quicker.

The devs call those very beginner stuff "Joseki".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseki
I recommend to change the subject (the first post).

And should be part of the wiki...

Rahjital wrote:Am I really the only one who always takes the time to build a functional burner industry first? I find having at least two stone furnaces constantly smelting iron plates without any need to be supervised makes my subsequent electricity expansion much quicker.

Yes, but it also take much time, so I really prefer to just rush the first steam engine. It's not like the initial first steam engine cost a lot of material to be done.

- Build copper/iron burner drills outputting directly into a furnace for easy access to building materials
- Have burner drills dump coal into chests, then carry the coal around you can use ctrl+left click to insert what you're holding into the object your mouse is over. This way you can quickly refuel miners and furnaces without opening the gui.
- DON'T rush to electricity, setting up a single boiler+engine+electric miner+pump is much more expensive than building a few burner drills. The only reasons for electricity are research and pollution; unless your pollution is reaching biters coal is abundant so fuel efficiency doesn't matter and burner drills cost about 20% of what electric drills cost once you factor in the power supply.
- Scout around and find large sources of iron+copper for your science supplies
- Press ALT to turn on the advanced overlay so you can see pollution. Don't worry about defense at first, just keep pollution away from biter nests. (Make sure you scout around your base ofc)
- A single biter spawner can be safely destroyed with a submachine gun and ~100 magazines
- Build near forests to absorb pollution

Balthazar wrote: - DON'T rush to electricity, setting up a single boiler+engine+electric miner+pump is much more expensive than building a few burner drills.

I disagree with that, because electric setup is still dirt cheap. No point in wasting ressources in burning stuff, nor in bothering to make an alimentation circuit.

Also, if a burner drill cost 20% of the electric drill, since it cover 6 time less deposit, it mean that burners are actually more expensive. Except if you took that into account.

ssilk wrote:The devs call those very beginner stuff "Joseki".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseki
I recommend to change the subject (the first post).

And should be part of the wiki...

Devs play Go?

I never build a burner drill and only build one burner furnace.

I set the burner drill on coal with a wood chest to collect, mine 5 stone with a pick, grab the burner and coal, leave the box, set up to mine iron and right into the furnace. when the coal runs out, go put it back on the coal with the chest, go mine some more stone, enough to make 2-3 boilers, move the drill to copper with furnace, spend about half the coal mined, move it to iron, build electric power, dont turn it on yet, bounce back and fourth a couple of more times until I can build 2 electric miners and a second furnace. From here, run the burner miner on copper, other two on iron and coal, put some coal in the boilers to start, build belts from all the new iron and move into the industrial age.

I disagree with that, because electric setup is still dirt cheap. No point in wasting ressources in burning stuff, nor in bothering to make an alimentation circuit.

Time is a resource too, but i guess this does depend on the game you're playing. I'm assuming this is for infinite map freeplay, so theres no practical limit to resources. I used to think the same way until i read a post about minecraft, can't remember who wrote it but it went "The game world is infinite, your time is not".

Early on the limit is how much iron/copper you have ready to put into machines. Any time you aren't crafting anything due to lack of materials is wasted time, and you can't extract resources fast enough by hand to keep this under control. Even if you get your electric net up you still need electric miners, and a single generator only goes so far. I'm not saying you should cover the entire deposit in burner drills, i usually put 6 on iron and 2 on copper and just leave them there for building mats, trying to make an electric grid before that just leaves you with constant downtime is all.

The cost of either drill, in terms of running out of resources is completely irrelevant, decent deposits have ~1mil ore in them, whether you spend 1000 or 3000 of that on miners is completely inconsequential since science, modules, logistics drones and mass construction are what will eat resources, extraction costs next to nothing.

Also, if a burner drill cost 20% of the electric drill, since it cover 6 time less deposit, it mean that burners are actually more expensive. Except if you took that into account.

Covering less space is a positive, it lets you fit more into the same area, speed is what matters and they operate at half the speed. Obviously electric miners are more convenient since they dont need to be fed with coal all the time, and can completely empty a deposit without having to move them I'm not saying you should NEVER move to electricity, but doing it too early is a waste of time.

starxplor wrote:I never build a burner drill and only build one burner furnace.

I set the burner drill on coal with a wood chest to collect, mine 5 stone with a pick, grab the burner and coal, leave the box, set up to mine iron and right into the furnace. when the coal runs out, go put it back on the coal with the chest, go mine some more stone, enough to make 2-3 boilers, move the drill to copper with furnace, spend about half the coal mined, move it to iron, build electric power, dont turn it on yet, bounce back and fourth a couple of more times until I can build 2 electric miners and a second furnace. From here, run the burner miner on copper, other two on iron and coal, put some coal in the boilers to start, build belts from all the new iron and move into the industrial age.

The theme was about quick startup.

This startup is slow. Do you want explain, or don you wants to explain you?

Biggest speed tip for me is - put down your lab as soon as you get electricity and get automation as your first tech. Then put the assembly machine attached to it. Build iron gears in hand and stick them in the assembly machine because the science packs take quite a while to make. That will set you up really quickly.

Most of the tips above are pre-electricity.

Balthazar wrote:Covering less space is a positive, it lets you fit more into the same area, speed is what matters and they operate at half the speed. Obviously electric miners are more convenient since they dont need to be fed with coal all the time, and can completely empty a deposit without having to move them I'm not saying you should NEVER move to electricity, but doing it too early is a waste of time.

If speed is what matters, why is operating at half speed considered a good thing? You get more output in the same amount of time with electric than with burner (0.5 mining for electric and 0.35 for burner) unless I'm understanding that backwards.

Now I'm curious and want to test which produces more - weather that number is the time it takes to produce 1 unit or weather that is how much it produces over a certain time. Given that all the other buildings with such a number are how much it produces (furnaces and assembly machines) I would expect mines are the same.

EDIT: Just tested it. Higher speed is better, the Electric Miner (Mining Speed 0.5) produces almost twice as much as the Burner Miner (Mining Speed 0.35) in the same amount of time in the same way that the Iron Furnace (Smelting Speed 2) produces more than the Stone Furnace (Smelting Speed 1) in the same amount of time.

If you are building a huge swatch of Burners you are hurting yourself (not to mention creating a ton of unnecessary pollution which won't make the natives happy) You are best off switching to Electric Miners as soon as you can, then Burners become totally obsolete.

In my experience you need a lot more iron than any of the other resources early on. I place a burner drill on iron first, then coal, stone and copper, before adding a few extra ones to iron.

carkasjak wrote:I place a burner drill on iron first, then coal, stone and copper, before adding a few extra ones to iron.

I put the first one on stone to get enough of it to build another burner-miner ASAP.
Though I admit I haven't played non-modded for quite some time so perhaps stuff needs different things in my games.

The basic goal should still be the same:
get all resources mined with miners ASAP. I've never spent any time mining anything by hand except trees.

Cut down a few trees to fuel the first burners until you can start mining coal.
Don't bother with transport belts or inserters, just put a chest/furnace to the miner output directly and go empty them from time to time. Getting electricity up is the second goal so you can get research going.
Automation is the first research, build a basic line of assemblers to start making red science packs. Don't bother with pre-planning the whole thing for far future, just put the stuff down so that you don't need belts to load stuff into/out of machines.

I like burner phase, with new burner-inserters one can build factory that makes steady stream of iron plates (the basic building material), so my order would be:

1. mining pick
2. cut tree
3. build burner-miner and furnace on iron and feed it with trees.
4. mine stone and build another one on coal and cut some trees to feed everything and build wooden chest.
5. slowly add belts and burner-inserters (eg. self-feeding coal miner), add another drill for iron and stone, connect it with belts... add copper miners etc.

disadvantages: slower electricity
advantage: easy transition to electricity as one has steady supply of materials and most of infrastructure is already set and could stay as it is for some time, one could concentrate on setting up automated research and then expand production with electric miners.