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The only things you need early mid game in very large quantities are belts and rails. Everything else can be made from mats almost instantly.

Why do I need setting up inserters/splitters/palls/etc production when I can right click several times and handcraft them enough for everything but late game megabases?

Crafting is kind of automation, I feel bad when nothing is being crafted, it is like wasted potential (no energy no pollution no logistic production, free real estate), but even then it is empty almost always, because everything you need is crafted in 0.5 seconds.

Is "don't handcraft" something like OCD for some folks? Or maybe it is for hundred-thousands factorio gurus, but I am confused why it is pushed in all tutorials as must have.

At first: It's your decision, do what you think is best.

Since it's an automation game, people like to automate things. That's the nature and the appeal of this game.

Generally handcrafting is fine. Handcrafting gets problematic, if can't get enough products in time for your plans.
Personally, gears and green circuits is something, which feels painfull to handcraft.
Handcrafting science packs feels more painfull
If I have a stock pile of green circuits, gears, iron plate, copper plate, etc. I can handcraft most products for early game. Belts is something I like to automate, too, because it is used en masse.

There are products, which cant be crafted by hand. Most prominent is plates, bricks or oil processing. Or f.e. engines

If you want to see fast gameplay, which basically automates things only, when necessary:
https://www.speedrun.com/factorio?h=Any

jodokus31 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 18, 2023 1:59 pm If I have a stock pile of green circuits, gears, iron plate, copper plate, etc. I can handcraft most products for early game. Belts is something I like to automate, too, because it is used en masse.

I agree, even in late game I set my logistics requests to a stack of all the main intermediate products: gears, circuits, engines, batteries, etc. That's in addition to assemblers, inserters and belts of whatever type I use most. The mall is mostly so that construction robots don't have to bother me when building blueprints on the other side of the map.

I consider gears and circuits to be mats that you should always have, you already produce them in large quantities.

This is my earlygame mall (up to red circuits), everything else is always handcrafted. Even pipes and ammo usually handcrafted. And when I see other peoples malls I feel confused.

You can use an underground belt to leave some room for a chest and an inserter filling it of a material if you like handcrafting. This way you have a reserve of material on the "bus" say at the beginning of it and it's all in line. I often do that before the mall is done, to handcraft the pieces of it.

Handcrafting is slow, you can forgot something, like power poles or stack inserters, and then you have 1 at a time being crafted, maybe you need 100 and you just sit there waiting for them to be finished or you have to find stacks of green circuit all the time. Whereas with the mall thing when you run out of power pole or stack inserter you just go to the mall area to restock and you can pick up easily the number you need. ( how many stack of green circuit for 47 stack inserter ? is a question from the past ).

Having just 1 machine that creates solar pannel for example may fill in a box while you are busy doing something else. ( and you can handcraft other thing while placing them). Same with modules, those are slow to handcraft.

Mining drill are very fast to handcraft from the intermediate material, but when you need 150 and the game has advanced, you have access to many different thing that will clutter the inventory and won't let you have enough room for the materials without several restock, or staying near the chest that contain the gears, and at this point one can also wish the chest contain mining drills and not just gears :p

The "early mall" i think is not what you'd build in your first few game. It is only after some time that you know what to do to reduce the tedium in your own playstyle. If you like to fool around with cars, you may need engines early in the game, can't handcraft those, if you want to use trains, locomotives require many engines, also if you plan on making a nuclear plant or use solar pannel or have a swarm of robots ? those takes time to handcraft and are a strong incentive to have somewhat of a mall going on early slowly but steady. Even if it's not making every single object in the game.

If you play solo and everyday it's easy to remember where you have a chest storing material . But if you have a few week between intense factorio playtime, it's enough to forget where things are if not all close to each other like in your screenshot, or in a mall .

And when the game is developping, and you start building outpost, a mall becomes even more valuable to me when you can pick up precisely the building missing, rather than going back to pick up material to handcraft things during the wayback and realize the inbalance in material that lead to the need of another trip to finish handcrafting everything. I think that's the kind of frustrating experience when it happen several time in a row that leads to something potentially labeled as "hate" for handcrafting even though it's much more "love for mall" in my eyes the main point .

Mall give you peace of mind, if you need 150 mining drill, you pick up 150 mining drill , not 450 green circuit and 600 iron plate, or maybe 400 iron plate, and 250 gears ? sorry i can't remember the exact receipe because i always use mall Mind is free to focus on other thing, it is relaxing and i think why it could be strongly recommended in some tutorials.

At last: it's your decision, your factory and your playstyle setting up a mall can be a lot of work but i have seen many on multiplayer game, using blueprint to keep your work from a game to another i think is a good way to improve a design over time and if done multiple time can lead to having collection of blueprint that you really appreciate and want to re-use creating "love" for them. Or at least a positive feeling.

One thing with handcrafting is the infinite crafting queue inventory. Once material has been reserved for handcrafting, it vanishes into the hidden handcrafting inventory, so you have infinite space.
Malls need planning, some material in advance, and early malls are soon outdated when technology advances. With handcrafting, you can skip the early malls you will deconstruct soon anyway.
Handcrafting is like an assembling machine with speed 1. So it's like 2 assembling machine 1 (0.5 speed) and still faster than assembling machine 2 (0.75 speed). This is a major factor for the early game.

However, regardless of what tutorials say, I will always begin to build a mall as soon as the relevant technology has been unlocked to make things work together. The game is about automating, so I go for automating. I tried to create an expandable and upgradeable mall for my own use, so I don't need to deconstruct and relocate and build new, which is kind of tedious until you get logistics. It's not a pretty organized orthogonal mall like an english garden you often see in examples, it's more like spaghetti or kind of Kudzu, however it does its job.

Sorry for mass-quoting, just want to make clear where I am coming from

Handcrafting is slow

No, handcrafting is not slow, it is very fast.

you can forgot something

You handcraft when you forgot something.

If you run out of mats, which happens, you just go to pick them up, you can have several places, cause they are used everywhere. It is arguable faster then go to the mall.

like power poles or stack inserters

I have never had any problem with power poles and inserters. Something I run out of mats, it is no different than runing of them and go to the mall. When I don't have inserters: open crafting screen, right click several time, done.

solar pannel

Solar panels is a production thing, you need small factory for them if you are going solar. But yes, they are very slow to handcraft. Even then though I handcraft 10-50 of them in the very start when I have nothing better to do and want to bootstrap my solar energy.

if you need 150 mining drill

This is an interesting probem. It is very endgame thing when you /suddenly/ need 150 mining drills. But even then I will still most likely either handcraft them (5 minutes? Ok, just make sure I have everything, go take mats, shift+click) or put 3 temp assemblers, set them up, ctrl+click in each, wait 2 minutes, then delete these assemblers.

When you need 150 mining drills not once but often, only then is a time to automate it.

Tertius wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2023 1:17 pm Handcrafting is like an assembling machine with speed 1. So it's like 2 assembling machine 1 (0.5 speed) and still faster than assembling machine 2 (0.75 speed). This is a major factor for the early game.

Qilili wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2023 1:42 pm

Handcrafting is slow

No, handcrafting is not slow, it is very fast.

Except, it is (slow).

Another way to look at this is that hand crafting is only as fast as 2 assembler 1s and will never be any faster. A mall you can build many, rather cheaply, and get production speeds much faster than handcrafting, either looking at it on the singular item scale or the multiple item/parrallel production scale.

But the other advantage to a mall is that it constructs the things you need in advance. Instead of waiting until you need it, then going around to collect the base materials and then wait a few minutes to construct all you need, you can instead have the mall producing and stock piling (to a limit based on your predicted needs) everything, so when you need it, you just go around and collect the final product. And doing it this way you don't need high production speeds if you don't want to because it will be running and stocking them up for you (to the set limit) constantly.



But in the end, if you feel that planning something out and/or reconstructing such a thing to make it better is too tedious compared to handcrafting, then you do you. Personally, I not only don't mind that, but that's part of the enjoyment for me. And I like being able to (early on) go to an area and just collect the final products vs the base materials then having to wait for the handcrafting to finish before I can actually do anything.

In the end, it's whatever is fun for you, and I don't think anyone should hang on the words of what streamers or other people (including us ) say, nor should you feel the need to justify any of your play style/decisions with us.

Coming from someone who has probably handcrafted low five-figures of items since I bought the game, I definitely get the appeal lol. But ultimately building the automation is like eating your vegetables. It might be a bit tedious but you're multiplying your handcrafting power by many, many times, and ensuring you always have an instant stock of what you need, versus crafting as I need it.

Qilili wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2023 1:42 pm Sorry for mass-quoting, just want to make clear where I am coming from

no problem it makes it easier to adress each point

Handcrafting is slow

No, handcrafting is not slow, it is very fast.

Well this is subjective, it is fast enough that the game is not punishing you too hard if you don't automate, it is still possible to win the game and handcraft many things and sometimes it is even necessary, i've read that for deathworld, to avoid the pollution from machines in the very early game.

I just find it slow. And often time i go for an intermediate solution when i play ,where i use temporary assembly or also temporary furnaces for steel. It would be machines not connected to belt, but only hand-fed directly or using a manually refilled buffer chest. This in my mind to multiply my crafting speed before things are properly automated.

Even in late game, i can do that with assembly lvl 3 and speed modules,placed down a temporary one, hand fed, for things like the silo or nuclear reactors or the armor, things you would rarely automate if not just for the sake of automating everything

you can forgot something

You handcraft when you forgot something.
If you run out of mats, which happens, you just go to pick them up, you can have several places, cause they are used everywhere. It is arguable faster then go to the mall.
I have never had any problem with power poles and inserters. Something I run out of mats, it is no different than runing of them and go to the mall. When I don't have inserters: open crafting screen, right click several time, done.

It is possible to argue i agree i think your screenshot illustrate one aspect of the mall, which is not only the place where "everything is crafted" but also the place where "everything is gathered". My personnal experience is that picking up materials from everywhere is not as fast as having some known places with chest filling up of materials. I took the example of the stack inserters but the fast splitters is also a good candidate for the annoying thing that need 40 gears or 15 green circuit, meaning that if you wish to build 50 of them, the amount of materials required is large enough for one player to be forced to pick up one , then the other, then again the first material, then the other and emptying belt is ok for 10 to 200 thing, but when you need 1000 or more of those material, it gets annoying imo.

Having 1 place ( or a few if your base is gigantic) to look for is simpler i feel, be it a "mall" or a "material reserve".

You CAN forgot to take things from the mall that's true, and then be forced to go back, even with a mall i would handcraft things that i forgot, unless it is the 150(+) mines that i forgot, or if i forgot 100 power poles, i would go and pick those up to the mall rather than handcraft usually because i would lack the materials for the mines or i wouldn't have the patience to wait for the power poles to be done. Having a mall changes mindset to "i will pick things up and place them on my next trip here". It frees the mind from the task of maintaining a crafting queue for those things you forgot.

This is not really "early" mall, but i think the "early" mall act the same way, once i have automated belt, i only handcraft a few of them when i am short of a few during building, then i can automate underground belt or splitter and inserters, and so on, reducing the things that i potentially handcraft as i unlock technologies.

Solar panels is a production thing, you need small factory for them if you are going solar. But yes, they are very slow to handcraft. Even then though I handcraft 10-50 of them in the very start when I have nothing better to do and want to bootstrap my solar energy.

It is very endgame thing when you /suddenly/ need 150 mining drills. But even then I will still most likely either handcraft them (5 minutes? Ok, just make sure I have everything, go take mats, shift+click) or put 3 temp assemblers, set them up, ctrl+click in each, wait 2 minutes, then delete these assemblers.

When you need 150 mining drills not once but often, only then is a time to automate it.

Well it depend on how long is the game, maybe 10 hours maybe 100 hours, maybe 1000 hours

150 mines could be 1 outpost connected with trains, because it's not worth the hassle to connect smaller outpost if your trains are long, this would be "mid-game" for me , maybe because i play for a long time and i'm used to building at larger scale than when i started. I wouldn't automate rails but not mining drill for example, i would do both at the same time as in game i would use both at the same time, and when doing so if i have the tech for signals i would also quickly add a machine to automate them.

If i unlock the tech later, i would try to automate signals near rails, so i could easily pick up both at the same time since they are used together. And doing so i would create somewhat of a mall, because there would be an area with all the material coming from belts for this purpose already so i may as well use it to automate something unrelated that uses the same materials and/or belt the new material when they become available, like red circuits. It can quickly get messy and as such leaving room for "a mall" can be a help for organization. Especially if you re-use the same mall on blueprint.

It would be different for solar pannel if you plan to use them heavily, as you said a dedicated small factory for them could be more suited. There is no strict definition for "mall" in factorio it's just a name people gives to different things, what if you have 8 assembly making solar pannel at the end of the mall if there are material left to use ?

I'm not saying you should change what you do based on my preference it would make no sense, the long ramble is only to explain (my) love for early mall based on (my) personnal opinion/habits Speedrunners have games WAY shorter than mine, and uses handcrafting much more, same with players that deal with heavy biters agression as in deathworld. There are many playstyle, me it's often time very long game ( 200 hours+ ) where i have friends that come say hello and help distract me some days and it helps when i have a mall pinpoint on the map so they can equip and join me fast.

The reverse situation of me joining another player's factory and not needing to find all the different good places to pick up material to help lead me to much appreciation of the concept of "mall" even though always re-using the same mall without improvement or adaptation can become boring i find it interesting to see different mall and how different players tackled the same problem. I think it's fun building the mall x) It can take me hours of time i enjoy, plus later i can use the mall !

When compared to a late-game mall, where everything is done using robots, i find the early mall more interesting, the benefits comes earlier, and the puzzle is funnier

Again i am aware other people do different things, or do not see things the same way, this is just my personnal opinion, i try to explain my love for early malls with rationnal argument, but maybe it has nothing to do with reasonning and it's just a dopamine/reward shot that triggers my brain to make me feel happy when i see a chest full of things that i can pick up with only 1 click that comes with a funny sound. It is difficult to "understand love" you ask a difficult question.

I handcraft a lot in early game, but I start automating very soon, because it is very fast and very simple. You don't need infrastructure and logistic for that, just two chests. My early semi-automated mall looks like this:


I manually collect and distribute raw materials to chests. I don't automate everything, just most frequent items.
Though, I start building fully automated mall soon, because I build large bases.

robot256 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 18, 2023 4:24 pm The mall is mostly so that construction robots don't have to bother me when building blueprints on the other side of the map.

I think, that's one of the most important points. A mall helps to create materials for bots to place.
Without it, you have to handcraft everything and place it in a logi-chest. That works for minor projects, but gets tedious at some point.

Another point regarding early early game. I like to place some hand-fed assemblers to craft me some gears and copper wire. This increases handcrafting immensely, when you don't have to craft those. esp. for power poles, inserters, belts, assemblers, miners.

If you put a full stack into the input buffer assembler, it works through everything, but if you want to feed it from chest, you also have to output it to chest, because it doesn't accumulate inside the assembler's output buffer. This is esp. important for f.e. ammo production, where one stack of iron only produces 25 ammo, so you would have to feed it quite often.
Alternatively, if you need a lot ammo, you can place a big amount of assemblers to work through multiple stacks. Same for turrets, which is a pain to handcraft IMO.

Handcrafting is speed 1, so faster than an assembler, even a blue one. But you can't scale it. And if you handcraft stuff from plates you will be waiting around a lot of the time instead of building. It takes forever to handcraft stuff from plates.

So at a minimum you need to automate the intermediates and the bulk items. And early game that means gears, green circuits, belts at least. As you hit oil the pipes also become an item and with trains the major factor is rails and engines.

I find inserter, assembler, furnaces and power poles annoying to hand craft as well because I tend to build sub assemblies by placing all the assemblers/furnaces, then I run the belt, next the inserters and finally I run around dragging or placing power poles. So I suddenly need 10-100 of them at an instance, easily more with belts.

Just recently I started a run for the "Lazy Boy" achievement. So absolutely no handcrafting and here is what I came up with for the Mall early game:
I'm using Bobs Inserter mod so I have some 90° inserters in there, sorry. But you can see the idea. At the start belts, gears, inserter and circuit boards are produced from just 2 chests, one for iron plates and one for copper plates. Every time you need something go by the furnaces, pick up some plates and dump them in there and take whatever you need. Over time I added fast inserters and assemblers as permanent fixtures. The science labs are a just there because I made the blueprint when I was building the science complex. But it's a temporary place to build stuff needing green circuits.

The same idea goes for the red science build. Just 1 or 2 assembler go a long way of building all the red science and you just hand fill the chest with plates. That setup is the same as hand crafting red science from gears + copper plates. Speed 1 overall. I sometimes even build green science the same way, also with 2 assemblers. It's a bit more complex and at that stage you run the chests often enough to warrant feeding it automatically via belts.

It comes down to how you naturally play the game and think. eg. if I want a row of AM1s, I can craft from plates at ~7s per assembler. I find that too slow. Ok so you keep green circuits and gears in your inventory as well as plates. Now the craft time is barely worth worrying about. But what about when I don't have enough iron plates to craft all the AM1s I need. As you point out I go back to my "warehouse" and grab some. How many? Well I could do some mental calculations, or just grab a "decent amount" so that I don't have to come back but don't overfill my inventory. So I do that, and start crafting. Turns out I'm also short of green circuits, just less short than I was for plates. How many do I grab? Hopefully I realise this while I'm still close to the "warehouse". And did my hand craft turn some of those plates into circuits? Hang on let me double check I still have enough iron plates.

I think this is the main issue. Either the wait, or having to think in terms of how many intermediates a build costs rather than the more intuitive assemblers, belts, inserters and poles. If you are good at getting everything you need at once and doing good enough mental calculations, then sure having a very basic early "mall" (belts, circuits, gears, plates, engines, rails, pipes, bricks) is great. If not, it can be frustrating.

And I think everyone agrees that once you have bots that you want to be automating finished items. That's often when the bottleneck switches from your ability to place things to how fast you produce things for the bots to place them.

In casual play I hand craft a lot, especially with the big mod packs (looking at you, Sea Block)!! It's great, but one of the main drawbacks is when you need to shuffle things around within your hand crafting queue.

One thing that I think people really sleep on is carrying around a bunch of assemblers to throw down to parallelize the "hand crafting," which is the other main drawback to hand crafting. When you can only craft one thing at a time, you are much slower than if you were able to craft 10 things at once, ad-hoc, with these hand crafting assemblers.

Generally I hand craft a fair amount, but the reason I dislike it is generally that when I'm handcrafting some big order (like rails or such), I'll then need like one inserter and a power pole for something else, and have to mess around to get those.
If you manufacture things you often need, and hand craft the other odds and ends (so manufacture all inserters, belts, mining drills, chemical plants, power poles and pipe, but not say undergrounds or splitters), then you get to use your hand crafting for things you need right now - it makes it way more responsive.
If you keep your hand crafting busy, you'll have to wait for the queue to get the one thing you need right now or cancel everything and re-queue it.
A few other reasons to manufacture:

• It makes the transition to drones easier and smoother

• There are items where having the raw materials is difficult or space consuming, or would impact your ability to make other things. Needing to make 12 stack inserters will probably empty your inventory unless you have a LOT of circuits, and lots of things can be trickle-made more easily than they can be burst made - particularly nuclear reactor related stuff, having less of an acute impact on production and not having a huge material-hunt.

• It makes you more willing to just spend the materials to build more stuff, as you already have it, making expansion faster

• It substantially reduces the number of clicks/button presses to do small changes, and makes pipetting work better - just 'Q', click, 'Q'

• Completionism, I like having everything on production, just because. Even handguns (though only via logistics drones).

Qilili wrote: ↑Sat Mar 18, 2023 4:06 am The only things you need early mid game in very large quantities are belts and rails. Everything else can be made from mats almost instantly.

Why do I need setting up inserters/splitters/palls/etc production when I can right click several times and handcraft them enough for everything but late game megabases?

Crafting is kind of automation, I feel bad when nothing is being crafted, it is like wasted potential (no energy no pollution no logistic production, free real estate), but even then it is empty almost always, because everything you need is crafted in 0.5 seconds.

Is "don't handcraft" something like OCD for some folks? Or maybe it is for hundred-thousands factorio gurus, but I am confused why it is pushed in all tutorials as must have.

Handcrafting is very slow.

An example:

One inserter takes 2.25 seconds to build:
0.5 cog
0.75 wire
0.5 green circuit
0.5 inserter

One fast inserter takes 5.25 seconds to build:
2.25 inserter
1.5 wire
1 green cicruits
0.5 fast inserter

If I automate everything, one fast inserter takes 1 second to build in an assembly machine 1. So I can produce fast inserters 5.25 times faster if I automate everything and have only 1 level 1 assembler.

If I want to produce a stack of 50 fast inserters by hand, it will take 5.25 * 50 seconds = 262.5 seconds, or ~4.4 minutes.
With 1 level 1 assembler producing at max capacity, it will take 50 seconds, saving 212.5 seconds, or ~3.5 minutes.

It takes some time to set up the automation, but it doesn't take many fast inserters to save time overall. A rough selection of my starter base, which produces everything including launching rockets (albeit very slowly) contains about 900 fast inserters:

900 / 50 = 18
18 * 4.4 minutes = 79.2 minutes (handcrafted)
18 * 50 seconds = 15 minutes (automated)

So I would save over an hour on crafting fast inserters if I set up automation, just for my starter base.

Combine this with the fact that I can have multiple things being produced at the same time, and it amounts to hours of saved time on just a starter base.

Staying with assembly machine 1, every machine I have active produces 50% of my handcrafted speed. So if I have 20 assembly machine 1s working, I am producing 1000% faster than if I handcrafted.

Combine this also with the fact that I can produce what I need ahead of time, and it takes (in practice) no time at all to produce what I need. It is already waiting for me when I need it. The only time cost is the initial set up time.

Note: you are ignoring crafting speeds so your values are a bit off. Grey assembler have a speed of 0.5, blue assembler a speed of 0.75 and hand crafting a speed of 1.

mrvn wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 8:45 am Note: you are ignoring crafting speeds so your values are a bit off. Grey assembler have a speed of 0.5, blue assembler a speed of 0.75 and hand crafting a speed of 1.

I don't think so.
He/She says, that a fast inserter is produced in 1 sec. in a grey assembler. That's correct, because crafting time is 0.5. That's course assuming, that all ingredients are fed reliably fast.

Anyway, I think the example is also not realistic, because it only considers, that everything is handcrafted from plates.
But you could also argue, that you have all ingredients or at least intermediates abundant in the inventory, precrafted via automation. Automation of intermediates is far less effort, than a whole mall...

In case of intermediates, you can handcraft a fast inserter also in 1 sec. (0.5 for the yellow and 0.5 for the fast inserter). Which is equally fast compared to full automation.

Also note that the early mall will be crafting belts, underground belts, splitter, inserters, furnaces, electric mining drills all in parallel and ahead of time. So when I see that I need more copper plates I simply grab the items out of the chests and build a new row of miners and furnaces without having to wait 20 minutes for handcrafting to build the entities.

Note2: you need belts and inserters for science packs so you have to automate them already. Easy to just have them fill a buffer chest while the science packs consume them slower than they are made.