I’ve watched a lot of content about this game and finally got around to playing it myself; here, I’m sharing my experience as a Factorio beginner—specifically, what I managed to achieve using the knowledge I’d gathered from videos and my own logic.
The difference compared to *EVE* is that *Factorio* is completely devoid of randomness. Everything that happens to you is 95% the result of your own decisions—whether logical or illogical. The game also really organizes your mind and encourages logical thinking. You build one thing, which leads to a second and a third—how do you connect it all? How do you optimize it? And so on. There are only resources and the time it takes to turn them into something.
Chip Production
All in all—though it was a bit of a struggle for a first attempt—my chip production facilities are scattered across different parts of the base.
Green chips
Ingredients:
- metal plates – iron
- copper wire – copper
Red chips
Ingredients:
- green chips – copper + iron.
- plastic – oil refining
- copper wire – copper.
Blue chips
- Green chip
- Red chip
- Sulfur – Oil Refining
Oil refining complex
I specifically built tanks to act as a crude oil buffer, but for some reason, they’re empty—possibly due to high consumption for plastic or solid fuel block production. Also, as you can see, the layout and piping are a bit "noobish"; I could have made it look much neater using underground pipes if I’d put in the effort.
Grenades
Grenade production is a key part of the base setup. I picked this up from a Factorio speedrunner on Twitch. Instead of messing around with beginner-level conveyor belt setups for turret ammo and walls, he rushes straight to grenades and uses them to clear out alien bases. It’s actually quite easy to do, even for a first-timer—it all comes down to the number of grenades you have.
Mines and Roboports
The second important step in defending the base against bug raids is moving on to the construction of roboports, explosives, and mines. I picked this up from a Factorio speedrunner on Twitch as well:
You cover the entire base perimeter by placing mines in a circular pattern; the roboports—and the construction drones within them—will automatically replenish losses as the bugs crash into the mines. It took me about 2,000 to 4,000 mines to cover the whole perimeter, and I also built a supply chest so the drones could grab replacements immediately:
There are 5,000 mines here. The only thing I haven't figured out yet is what logistic drones are for and how to use them.
Personal Crafting
To avoid waiting ages for items to finish crafting in my inventory and to speed up the process, I set up a dedicated spot for emergency crafting—without running component conveyor belts to it. I’ve seen *Factorio* speedrunners do this, too.
In this instance, I’m crafting drone bodies, followed by the construction drones themselves, roboports, and the components needed to build them. Everything is loaded manually; there is no automation involved.
Research complex
Unlike in *EVE*, skills aren't learned passively; they require various "science packs," which—roughly speaking—are crafted from basic resources. Some science packs can only be obtained on other planets. As far as I understand, six types of science packs are available on the starting planet—or seven, if you count the space-based one.
Basically, you craft them and feed them via conveyor belts into research centers. Here’s the mess I ended up with on my first attempt:
The advantage is that the four basic packs—red, green, black, and blue—are easily delivered to the labs. The problem lies in where to squeeze in the yellow (utility) pack, the purple (production) pack, and the white (space) pack. Ideally, you’d also want capacity for planetary science packs—meaning, roughly speaking, you need to feed four more types into the existing setup.
As I see it, there are only two solutions right now: either run extra belts along the sides and down the center of the labs, or rebuild the research center so all the labs are in a single line with two belts running along each side. That would allow for up to eight science pack types per lab, which is—in theory—perfectly fine.
Speedrunners do it more elegantly; I deliberately didn't watch them so I could figure it out myself.
Red – Automation
Tech tree:
Green – Logistics
Tech tree:
Black – Military
Tech tree:
Blue – Chemical
Tech tree:
Those are all four science packs currently in production. But there are still three more science packs left on the starting planet:
Yellow – Utility
Purple – Production
White – Space
It took me 3–5 days just to reach the point of building the rocket silo. Meanwhile, the *Factorio* pros manage to leave the starting planet, Nauvis, and fly a spaceship to the next one in just four hours. A full tour of all the planets and a complete playthrough takes these guys up to ten hours—or even less. That’s the 2025 world record.
Features and issues encountered
Oil
Underground pipes are overpowered because standard ones make it hard to move around. I haven't tested the flamethrower yet—it's a good weapon against bugs and uses oil (ammo) as fuel. The only thing I haven't figured out yet is why the oil isn't accumulating in the system but is being consumed at a massive rate; I'll need to test that.
Setting up a smelting area at the base
Once you’ve upgraded from solid-fuel drills to electric ones, there is no point in placing furnaces right where you mine the raw materials. After all, electric furnaces are still a long way off in the tech tree, and with solid-fuel ones, you’d just exhaust yourself running between outposts to refuel them with coal. It is far more efficient to transport the raw ore to your base and smelt it into items there for subsequent crafting:
Power Drop
On the starting planet, Novis, you can set up a huge number of steam engines; they will provide a decent amount of electricity for production—provided you keep feeding coal into the furnaces. The problem arose when the coal deposit at the base ran dry, and the solid fuel derived from oil covered only 10% of the energy demand.
All production and extraction ground to a halt; I had to urgently run a power line to a new 5-million-unit coal deposit near the alien nests and—on top of that—lay 2,000 mines around the perimeter of the resource patch:
It helped that pollution from the factories drops when energy levels hit zero. But the next problem was: how do you start up electric mining drills when there’s no power at the base?
A coal buffer stored in a few chests at the base saved the day. After manually fueling the steam engines and shutting off the copper and iron drills, it took three to five attempts to get the system running and secure a steady supply of coal from the new deposit—and finally restore everything to normal. It was a rather interesting, albeit unpleasant, experience.
Maybe it would have been better to go for uranium mining and set up a nuclear power plant? Who knows—I just haven't seen speedrunners do that; it would need testing.
Power armor is a solid choice
It has plenty of module slots to suit various tastes and playstyles. I’ve got one exoskeleton leg installed, though the pros usually go for two to move even faster. Factorio speedrunners also always equip a personal roboport with a swarm of drones. I use two laser turrets instead, since I’m still learning the ropes and it makes fighting the biters easier.
Unraveling the mystery of logistics drones
I still haven't quite figured out what they're for; the description mentions moving cargo between logistics chests, but logically, they'll likely be used to load or unload the rocket.
"Spaghetti" is everything! That’s the affectionate term players use for the endless tangle of conveyor belts.
Research complex upgrade
All in all, the labs are now supplied with up to eight types of science packs—currently six. This excludes the space science pack and those from other planets.
The main issue I ran into was the massive consumption of chemical science packs and red circuits.
Crafting chemical science packs requires:
- Engines
- Sulfur
- Red circuits
While engines and sulfur are relatively easy to craft, red circuits require green circuits, copper wire, and plastic. Connecting a second oil field to the base will eliminate any plastic shortages.
You need to either double red circuit production or set up buffer chests:
Production and Utility Science Packs
Because things get absolutely crazy from here on out, with even higher consumption of red and green circuits:
Rocket Silo and fueling
But that’s not all; even higher chip consumption kicks in if you decide to automate the fueling of the rocket silo—required for constructing the space platform and the ship for interplanetary travel:
This means you have to run conveyor lines for three different components from across the base to fuel it:
And while the belts are filling up, you’ll burn through even more red, green, and blue chips:
The solution is to either double your chip production or set up a buffer—using a chest for each type, plus a buffer for the chemical science pack as well.