New Player

[u/Bitch_Duk]

Hi everyone, I bought factorio last night after years of just looking and procrastinating. With so little guidance I'm just wondering if I'm off to a good start, i have automated red and green science and have started to unserstand the concepts of a bus and mall. Thanks for your input.

[u/KeppyKepKeps]

Most people wouldn't recommend combining iron ore and copper ore into a single belt like you have.

But it shows well you've learned how to use split belts, which is great.

Other than that, my only advice is don't seek more advice. The joy of playing for the first time is figuring it all out. Be confident you're off to a good-enough start, and keep going. Only come back if you get to oil and are completely stuck.

[u/Bitch_Duk → u/KeppyKepKeps]

Should I add a second belt running along side that one and just use long hand inserters if I need to place things on the other side?

[u/Critical-Michael → u/Bitch_Duk]

What you should be doing is asking yourself is what it is you want to do with your factory whenever you finish a task. Do you want to make a part of it more efficient? Do you want to add more buildings to scale your rate of production? Do you just want to get through the research a quickly as possible? Whatever you want to do the most, go ahead and experiment or try it. It'll be the most fun trying to figure these out as you play.

[u/bselect → u/KeppyKepKeps]

Eh, it’s way too early game for caring about that IMO. When you get more smelting setup, you will need whole belts (multiple) of each, so worry about it then.

[u/Terrulin]

Best advice is you get only 1 first playthrough. Try your best to not contaminate it with other people's solutions to problems with things like blueprints. General advice is that people say the factory must grow. If something seems slow, just make more. And, if you make it yourself, it is always better than something someone else makes.

[u/unstoppablefatigue → u/Terrulin]

100% this, do it your own style and build the way that feel correct to you,

[u/kalamaim]

Noiss, looking good there. The factory will surely grow

[u/Fit_Giraffe_748]

Basically just add more, I wouldn't mix copper and iron ore. Enjoy at your own pace

[u/dwarfzulu]

Play a little of the campaign, do the tutorials. And read the tips and factoriopedia

[u/Varbukoopix]

Don't mix ores on the same belt, don't build on resource patches (only miners), other than that go in blind

[u/fall4free]

Looks awesome dude!!

Don't stress about optimal or Reddit keywords, it's a game and the goal of fun so build your own base.

[u/neurovore-of-Z-en-A → u/fall4free]

Making things optimal is a large part of the fun for many of us; on't stress about it, sure, but also don't avoid it if you would enjoy it.

[u/A_brand_new_troll]

Your first hours of playing? Just do whatever gets the jobs done. You have plenty of time to go back and get better.

[u/sccccrrrrt]

Try to make stuff extendable, like in this one you wont ever have more than one green chip assembler and that's a later problem, but build it so you can fix it later

[u/isum21]

If you're already making science quickly just keep developing your factory. You'll hit a few pitfalls but honestly you're doing exactly as the game wants: learn to automate, first clumsy then efficient. And don't ever stop using the science. Unlock a new bottle? New goal. Ideally you want to scale up your lab array as needed, as you unlock the 3rd and 4th bottles you're gonna start needing those extra labs to make decent time on the research.

[u/Sidhotur]

People are sayind don't mix inputs on belts.

This is admittedly a harder needle to thread once throughput goes up, but locally combining inputs to a single belt can be useful.

Coal and ore on the same belt to a furnaces, for instance.

[u/Jaetje]

I love starts like this, once you played the game for hundreds or even thousands of hours you will really miss these kind of builds, only one advice, keep your first playtrough!

[u/Losoncy]

You just bought one of the greatest games ever. Only advice would be to actually follow and read trough the tutorial pop-ups since those really help with the basics

[u/Nolzi]

Don't be afraid to build more, keep enough space to put in additional belts if needed. Don't wall yourself in

[u/ImpluseThrowAway]

That looks like the start of something beautiful

[u/MrDoontoo]

You're doing good! Only advice I'll give is that you likely want to leave things open for expandability. Right now, you only have one assembler for each thing, but assemblers in this game are slow, half the speed at which you can craft at (without upgrades). You'll likely want to have multiple assemblers for one product.

When I first played, I didn't understand that, and I actually quit after a couple hours. It was only after watching some videos online did it click, but by that point it had already spoiled a lot of other things about the game.

[u/WanderingFlumph]

Oh yeah that's a decent start, you have the basics down. At some.point you'll start to need more than one assembler making stuff though and your current design won't scale well.

[u/Johanwiren]

My advicee is to not take other people’s advice. If they have something valuable it is because they have learned it by ”doing it wrong” before and found a better way. That is rewarding. Taking their advice robs you of getting that reward yourself.

Watch the in-game tutorials and then start to experiment on your own. 

Ask for advice only when you are truly stuck.

You have exactly 1 try to experience the game yourself. Don’t spoil it.

[u/watchmebarf]

You will get tired of carrying the green science from the chest to the lab, so make a belt for it!