[0.9] Rays step by step guide for a compact factory

[ray4ever]

In this step by step guide I will show you how to build an efficient and compact factory which is able to produce science pack 3s at a constant rate while also building modules, construction robots and logistic robots.
The end result will be looking like this:

The savegame can be downloaded here.
If you want to play the savegame from me you need to place the .zip file in your factorio save game folder. Under Windows it is most likely located under: C:\Users\"YourUserName"\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\saves
But lets start at the beginning.

The map:

• - Make sure that all resources are near you and in good supply. (iron, copper, coal, wood and stone)
  - Enough space for buildings as you don’t want to clear large amounts of forest for your factory
  - Water nearby
  - If you are new to the game: Don’t start in a desert as you pollution will spread rapidly and thus you will be attacked more
  - Don't be afraid to restart as this will generate a new map each time till you find one that suits you
  - If you are new to the game: Start the game with very rich ore deposits as it is making the game slightly easier
  - You can download my map as a savegame from here

The plan:

• - Think big, build small (at least at the start)
  - If you pause the game (shift + space) you will see a grid with some thicker lines. Very roughly, you will need one square for your power generation, 1 square for smelting, 2 squares for production

The start:

• - Start by crafting 2 iron axes (you have already the necessary resources at the start of the game)
  - Chop roughly 60 wood.
  - Craft 10 wooden chest (you will need them sooner or later)
  - Mine around 10 coal and place your mine there. Place a chest in front of the mine output
  
  - Mine around 20 iron, get coal from chest, place furnace next to the iron deposit; put iron + coal in furnace.
  - Mine 40ish stone; craft 1 furnace
  - Collect the produced iron plates; collect coal, craft a mine
  - Place mine in such a way that the output is directly dropped in the furnace
  
  - Mine / collect resources to produce one additional mine + furnace for your copper setup; place this setup on your copper field
  - Get one more iron plate setup (mine + furnace) and one additional coal mine

Getting power:

• - Produce iron plates and copper bars till you have crafted the following (don’t forget to put coal in your mines and furnaces):
  • o 1 pump
    o ~3 boilers
    o 1 steam engine
    o ~3+1 inserters (the yellow ones); one for each boiler
    o 1 pipe to ground
    o A few normal pipes
    o ~3 transport belts
    o 5-10 small electric poles
  - Place the items as shown in the following image (to get everything running you will have to place the coal manually in the boiler)
  

Electrifying things:

• - Start by building electric mines; 1-2 for coal for starters and 2 for iron
  - Rearrange your iron setup as shown in the following image
  
  - A savegame can be downloaded here
  - Adapt a similar setup for your copper bar production
  - Extend your power supply by adding a few more boilers and steam engines
  - The ideal ratio is 1 water pump, 14 boilers and 9 steam engines (see power row)
  
  
  Starting research:
  • - Start by crafting 2 labs and 30 red science packs
    - Don’t forget to extend your mining and smelting facilities as you will need quite a bit of stuff later on
    - Research Automation(for assembling machines) and Logistics (for splitters and underground belts)
    - Craft 4 Assembling machines, a few inserters and a lot of belts
    - Your factory should now be similar to the one shown in the following image (I crafted and placed the assembly machines without power only for placement purposes; the placement why will later become clear)
    
    - Craft and place 2 radars to get a feeling for your surroundings.
    - Congratulation! You have just automated your science pack 1 production!
  Important tech 1 research, which you should complete before producing science pack 2:
  • - Turrets
    - Electronics (smart inserters)
    - Automation 2 (Assembly machine 2)
    - Steel processing
    - Optics
  Optional tech 1 research, which you should research some when but isn’t that important for now:
  • - Military
    - Armor crafting
  Next steps:
  • - Craft a few assembly machines (you will need them anyways) and inserters (always useful)
    - Place a assembly machine and produce ammunition (output goes into a chest)
    - Extend your line of labs
    - Build ~10 turrets and place them at strategic locations (like at your power plant, your assembly machines, your smelting and mining areas)
    - Also build a second power line (pump, 14 boilers, 9 steam engines)
  Establishing science pack 2 production:
  • - You will need at least one assembly machine 2 (for building inserters)
    - Build a circuit production line consisting of 3 cable assemblers and 2 circuit assemblers as shown in circuit start.
    - Build your science pack 2 production as shown
    
    - You will notice that you have now a severe lack of iron plates so extend your production to 16 furnaces in total
    
    - A savegame is available here
    - Congratulations, you established you science pack 2 production!
    - Feel free to build more assembler 2 and fast inserters (the blue ones); you should replace all old assemblers in the future (cables, circuits, gears, belts and inserter assemblers will need fast inserters to fully function)
  
  Now the game is opening up quite a bit and your game will begin do differ from my game more and more. Maybe you are going to be attacked heavily and thus need to invest in a good defense or you want to try out your own factory layout. Personally I would like to encourage you to try out your own layouts because that’s what is making factorio fun! If you still want to have some ideas how to incorporate the science pack 3, efficiency module and bot production
  
  Tech 2 research: (I suggest the following order):
  • - Oil processing (unlocking the oil tech tree); see next section for setup and details
    - Advanced electronics
    - Logistics 2
    - Sulfur processing
    - Plastics
    - Fluid handling
    - Battery
    - Lasers
    - Laser turrets
    - Inserter item stack size bonus 1
    - Advanced material processing
    - Advanced material processing 2
    - Flammables
    - Explosives
    - Rocketry
    - Modules
    - Effectivity module
    - Engine
    - Electric Engine
    - Flight
    - Advanced electronics 2
    - Robotics
    - Construction robotics
    - Logistic robotics
    - Logistic system
    - Advanced oil processing
    - Whatever you like!
  Getting ready for oil:
  • - Extend your iron plate production so that you can produce steel bars (around 4 furnaces producing steel; Personally I refill them manually with coal as you will soonish replace those with electric furnaces)
    - Build an electric mine on top of stone. Next to it place a chest for rough stone, further down the line a furnace for stone brick production. (Later on you will add an assembler for stone wall production)
  Setting up the oil industry:
  • - You will need a handful of Pumpjacks, 4 Refinerys (planning big even though you won’t have enough oil early on), 4 Chemical plants
    - A few liquid storage tanks for your light and heavy oil as you will mostly need petroleum gas
    - With advanced oil processing researched you will have to add a cracking site where you are cracking heavy into light oil into petroleum gas.
    
  Science pack 3 production:
  • - The production of science pack 3s is needing four resources (smart inserters, steel, batteries and advanced circuits). The first two ingredients are somewhat easily incorporated into the existing setup, while the production of batteries and advanced circuits is heavily dependent on your petroleum gas supply.
    - I will just show you the end result here as you should be able to reproduce this setup easily.
    
    - A savegame is available here
  Producing bots:
  • - For your bot (construction and logistic) production you will need heavy oil and a wide variety of other goods which is making this part of the factory ugly.
    

Congratulations! When you followed my steps in building you factory you should be in a very good shape for late game. Now it is completly up to you how you want to continue the game. Things you could do:

• - Expand you base by building remote mining bases
  - Build up a rail network to bring all the mined ores into your base!
  - Kill these nasty biters and get their alien artifacts to unlock the tech 4 research
  - Start a new game

[ssilk]

I will link that in the wiki.

I would also invite you, to put this in the wiki, because it is much better changeable. I can help, if wanted.

[Hogweed]

Wow! What a great setup! I have to laugh at how I was doing this before, my Sci Pack 2 production was taking a huge part of my base, making each part and building lots of belts to run each part up to the next assembler. I see now how eveything is tied in and can be confined to much smaller areas with much less production! Really well done.

I was watching some youtube vids and came across a new series I have been watching, and was very impressed. I could not believe how compact this Sci Pack 1 and 2 was, I took a screenshot of it. I guess the only problem here is that production is very slow, so I guess he is going to be taking his time with research! in the image he just finished setting it up, so the Pack2's have not yet really started. But making Sci Packs 1 & 2 with just 1 belt each of Plates and copper bars!! I cant wait to see how he does the tier 3 research!

I would like to see how I can incorporate your ideas with his. The videos are from Malkasphia, and he is on Pt 4 as of today. Here is the link to them, I recommend this for newbies or anyone, because he has some great ideas as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMe2BNh3BBs

Here is the screen of the research area, I have never seen one this compact. Would love to hear any comments of how this will work in the long run:

[BurnHard]

Yes, very nice design of a very compact factory. Thanks for the pictures

@Hogweed: Here is a picture of my first version of 0.9.x science pack 1 and 2 production with an output capacity of 1 pack per second (*crafting speed) per colour. It is already quite compact but of course there is always space for optimization

[Hogweed]

Thats another great setup, very compact, yet has high production!! Really great! Its funny, I was watching a lot of videos and laugh now, as they all were doing what i was, large sprawling bases with so much inefficiency! Nie to see it can be done without drawing huge hoards of biters!!

[BurnHard]

@Hogweed

The design in your posted video screenshot lacks the possibility to easily scale up science pack production with more assemblers. In my design just add more assemblers at the end of the line. As you can see I also added chests from which I always can take out the intermediate products (gears, belts, circuits) for handcrafting other things.

[Bleda]

I love how you do the battery production! This is really compact. both sulfuric acid extits are directly connected to the battery factories and even the small space between them is used. very nice!

I really love these small production units. I never get these because I think I'll want everything to be extendable. I want to be able to add another assembly line if I feel things are going too slow. But that's not possible with small designs. I guess I should give them a try anyway in my next game. And just build a second unit if it's getting too slow for me.

[liq3]

@OP: very cool base. I'll never build something like that myself, as I care far more about throughput and expandability then compactness. Very cool though.

[Bleda]

My latest try on a compact red&green science factory. I think I could add at least one more assembly of each type, maybe two. And I should probably add a buffer storage for the science packs then.

[sparr]

- The ideal ratio is 1 water pump, 14 boilers and 9 steam engines (see power row)

You don't seem to have connected all of the steam engines together here.

[ray4ever]

Quite a few replies raised the aspect of expandability and to some extend on how many science pack producing factories and labs you will need.
In my game I went for an output of 1 (/0,75 production speed of assembler 2) science pack every 2 seconds (= 6 blue science pack assemblers). This doesn't seem to be a huge amount but is more than enough to fuel my 16 science labs. I found that you won't need any more labs or more assemblers producing science packs. If you would, let's say, double your science pack production you would have to double your mining and smelting output which is surely doable but most likely only in the endgame when you have already researched most technologies anyway. At least till tech 4 you will have so many things to do that you won't be tech starved and just waiting that a technology will finish.

If you would still want to expand your science pack production, you can actually expand my setup pretty easily. For an increased science pack 1 and 2 production you would only have to add more assemblers to the east (and maybe an gear assembler). For the science pack 3 production you may have to increase the circuit production in the south (where there is more than enough space for it) and reroute the right adv. circuit production (and thus skipping the module production). Adding another battery production unit to the west is also easy to to. So with minimal restructuring (don't forget to double your labs and smelting areas) it should be possible to produce 1 science pack of every color each second.

[Finndibaenn]

@ray4ever this is a very nice setup.

In my latest game, while doing the push for the rocket defense I found that I had to have 8 or so circuit factories so that the circuit consuming factories (advanced circuit, modules ... I'm looking at you ! ) are not stalled. And I have the impression that you have only 4 on your setup ?

Your fluid setup is especially interesting

[ray4ever]

Yeah, I currently have only 4. But as you can see at the splitter at the end of the iron smelting area I actually expected to need more circuit assemblers. But until now (mid tech 3 production) I found 4 assemblers to be more than enough. Up next would be an expansion on the number of mines (connected by train), followed by a larger smelting area and only than I would increase the circuit production even more to build a second row of adv. circuit production (8 assemblers) and adding the rocket defense (even though I usually start a new game when I've reached tech4 as I personally tend to get bored from killing biters quite fast).

[Zourin]

It's not bad, and I like the basic idea of the power setups. I'd always put the boiler array with a 3x3 bank of engines.. never thought of doing a 3-out-6-wrapback.


Red/Green packs aren't bad, and I can produce those very easily by sharing a belt for gears. All fed by an iron/copper dual-laned belt.



It's only a quad setup, but it works and it's fairly compact.

I don't mess with blues. Ever. Let the bots deal with that crap. I'm still contending with blue production in this screenshot, but it's mostly having to do with a grave shortage in basic circuits elsewhere.

[ray4ever]

I just wanted to give my guide a little bump, so that new players might get some inspiration for their games!

[Zordah]

Thank you very much for this. I only got this game a couple of days ago

[PharAway]

Great setup Ray. Thank you for sharing this. Definitely will use this when working on my next factory.

[JackGruff]

You don't seem to have connected all of the steam engines together here.

Look at his first picture in the OP. He has pipes at the ends.