Factorio Forums

New to to the game, and I just got a few things going factory-wise. I ran into an issue where I had plates, but I couldn't craft anything with them. Error saying needing to have something else craft them.

Your image isn't actually an image, it's just the word "image."
Also, the exact text of the warning/error is needed.
This sounds more like a misunderstanding than a bug report but there isn't enough information.

That looks to be a scenario or campaign of some sort (never played them myself), and it looks like it wants you to make the gears in an assembly machine. You can see in the tooltip it has a section "Made in:" where it tells you what machine to use. Most items can be made by hand in freeplay but some need a specific machine like a furnace, assembler or chemical plant.

This is the introduction campaign, and yes, you have to craft gears in an assembly machine.

I think this is for teaching the basic mechanics of the game.