Factorio Forums

I figure the best way to learn LUA is to just look at how the game works already and figure things out from there.

Except... where are the core game LUA files that make up the "base" mod?

I've been looking very thoroughly in here... I don't see anything like it.
F:\Steam\steamapps\common\Factorio
C:\Users\foo\AppData\Roaming\Factorio

In your case they should be in F:\Steam\steamapps\common\Factorio\data\base, you probably want the prototypes folder in there.

Better have a look at mods that do specific things, because a lot of the base game stuff is scattered around several files and sometime done through helper functions, which can be hard to read if you are not a coding monk.