Walkthrough#

Factorio’s win condition is crystal clear: starting from zero on a barren planet, hand-mine resources, build your first automated production line, grow it into a sprawling factory, and finally research rocket technology and launch a rocket from the Rocket Silo. There are no character levels, gear affixes, or story branches — the only measure is your production line design and efficiency. This guide lays out a reusable route from landing to launch, in chronological order, so you can skip the dead ends.

Stage Overview#

This route assumes single-player default settings. If enemy harassment gets frequent, slow your expansion and solidify defense before laying new lines.

The Opening (First 1-3 Hours)#

You land with nothing — every item must be gathered and crafted by hand. The goal is escaping manual labor as fast as possible.

Step One: Grab Resources, Claim the Spot#

Follow the prompts and hand-mine iron ore and coal. Early on you need zero defense: nests are far away, pollution is tiny, and your activity provokes nothing. Prioritize a spot with iron, copper, and coal within reach — it saves enormous transport time.

Step Two: Smelt by Hand, Craft Your First Iron Plate#

Burn iron ore into iron plates in stone furnaces, then hand-craft inserters, underground belts, and other basics. Resources are tight at first, so hand-build a small set of core machines:

• Burner mining drills: coal-powered, replacing hand mining with a big efficiency jump.
• About 10 stone furnaces: coal-fed, forming a simple smelting array.
• A handful of inserters and belts: opening the “ore → furnace → chest” transport chain.

Step Three: Coal Power#

The game has a clear energy node. Burn coal in boilers → steam engines output electricity. Early on one boiler group plus a few steam engines supports your drills and assemblers. You don’t need solar yet — scale the coal system first.

Step Four: Research Opening Tech#

Use Automation to unlock the tech tree. Priority research:

• Automation — unlocks assembling machines
• Electronics — unlocks assembling machine 2 and green circuits
• Logistics — staged unlocks for belts and inserters

Get red science packs flowing into a research lab ASAP so research runs itself instead of you clicking.

Where Beginners Get Stuck#

• Always out of coal? Belt a coal line straight into your boiler row; don’t let drills stall.
• Hand-crafting too slow? Automate inserters / underground belts / stone furnaces — never stop.
• Biters approaching? Check your pollution cloud — in the first few hours you’re usually safe.

Early Automation (Red and Green Science)#

Past the “all manual” phase, you reach the real core: machines producing science packs automatically.

Red Science (Automation Science Pack)#

Recipe: 1 iron plate + 1 gear. The most basic, highest-demand pack. Recommendations:

• Dedicate an assembler to gears, feeding multiple science assemblers.
• Target output: roughly 10-15 per minute is plenty for early research.

Green Science (Logistics Science Pack)#

Recipe: 1 transport belt + 1 assembler. Note that both ingredients are themselves machines — green science is hard because “machines must build the machines that build science”. A 2:3 ratio (2 belt assemblers feeding 3 science assemblers) works; pre-calculate each stage before connecting, so you don’t tear lines apart later.

Belts and Inserters Basics#

Chain “copper/iron plates → wire/gears → assemblers” with inserters. The default inserter behavior is hand-to-mouth; the “long-handed” variants (unlocked via logistics tech) let you pull from across a belt for splitting. This is lesson one before any large reorganization.

Milestone: An Automated Smelting Row#

Line up stone furnaces in a row — upgradeable to electric furnaces later — so ore flows in and plates flow out automatically.

Don’t be misled by the name here: electric furnaces are the late-game coal-free upgrade; early on, stone and steel furnaces are fine. The point is making the furnace array a plate bus intake — furnace output flows onto the belt bus automatically instead of piling into chests.

Mid-Game: Oil Processing and Blue Science#

Oil is the first real difficulty spike, and the mandatory road to blue science and beyond.

Starting Oil Extraction#

Find crude oil and extract it with pumpjacks. Note: a pumpjack draws down the field’s reserves over time, so output gradually declines, and distant fields need pipelines or rail.

Refining and Byproduct Balance#

Refining yields up to three byproducts: heavy oil, light oil, and petroleum gas. The classic trap is one backed-up byproduct stalling the whole refinery. The fix is cracking heavy oil → light oil → petroleum gas to convert the surplus, with the circuit network reading tank levels to start and stop cracking pumps automatically. See the site’s Oil Processing page for details.

Blue Science (Chemical Science)#

Recipe: advanced circuits + engine units + sulfur. Sulfur comes from petroleum gas + water. Blue science unlocks productivity modules, roboports, and other key techs — the most important mid-game watershed. Build a proper advanced-circuit area while you’re at it.

Plastic and Power Upgrades#

Plastic is the base of nearly every late-game product (advanced circuits, LDS, and more). Before assembling machine 3s arrive, upgrade power: transition from coal toward solar panels or accumulated steam. Solar produces no pollution — nothing attracts biters — ideal for contested bases, and nuclear replaces it in the very late game.

Mid-Game Expansion (Railways and Zoning)#

The Main Bus Layout#

Past the mid-game, ad-hoc lines can’t support a hundred products. The strongest general-purpose plan is a Main Bus + fixed modules:

• Run one or more belts of each key intermediate — iron plates, copper plates, steel, green circuits, plastic, advanced circuits — laid horizontally (4-wide buses recommended, 4 tiles each).
• Other lines branch off the bus, connected in parallel one by one. Keep 4-6 tiles of free space along both sides for inserting modules.
• Plan the bus’s expansion direction from day one, so adding a branch later doesn’t mean tearing up the whole line.

Zones: Mining / Smelting / Manufacturing / Research#

Over-fine zoning isn’t necessary. Suggested zones:

• Mining: drills + an ore bus (or the rail head-station)
• Smelting: turn all ore into iron/copper plates — the intake for every product
• Manufacturing: circuits and other intermediates
• Research: all science pack production, near the end of the bus

Zoning this way also concentrates the high-pollution areas (furnaces, assemblers), making wall placement easier to manage.

Train Transport (Rail Network)#

Once iron/copper outposts are more than 1-2 screens away, belts stop being worth it. Lay rails:

• Rail signals: place them every train-length on one-way track, allowing multiple trains.
• Chain signals: place chain signals before intersections and regular signals after, avoiding deadlocks.
• Use fluid wagons for crude oil or sulfuric acid, cargo wagons for ore.

For full signal rules see the site’s Rail Transport guide.

Defense Against the Biters#

Contrary to the early-game calm, biters are an active enemy — drawn by pollution. The farther and denser your pollution spreads, the more they notice, eventually triggering attack waves.

Defense Tech Path#

The mainstream progression is military science plus guns:

• Submachine gun
• Gun turret → piercing rounds
• Tanks and laser turrets (power-hungry)
• Artillery

Defense Essentials#

1. Build the wall + turret line at the edge of your pollution cloud (check the pollution view on the map), not hugging the base.
2. Space turrets so their coverage overlaps.
3. Actively clear nearby nests (spawners): use a tank or rockets to wipe the nearest nests inside your pollution radius, easing biter pressure.
4. From mid-game on, clearing nests in polluted areas regularly is the price of expansion.

Flame turrets and further defense tech arrive in later research. See Combat and Defense for details.

Late Game: Nuclear Power, Robot Logistics, Full Automation#

Nuclear Power#

After researching Nuclear Power, reactors revolutionize your base’s power capacity and stability. Mine uranium, run Uranium Processing to yield U-235 and U-238; reactors + heat exchangers + steam turbines form the chain. Nuclear is clean and stable, replacing coal and solar as the backbone power source.

Logistic Robots#

Logistic robots + roboports move the base to another tier:

• Logistic robots carry items from provider chests to requester chests.
• Construction robots automatically build, repair, and remove structures from blueprints — “stamp blueprints” at scale.

Use blueprints to paste whole districts — smelting arrays, furnace blocks, research zones — onto new expansion land. See Blueprints and Robots for design details.

Modules#

Adding modules to late-game lines massively raises efficiency:

• Pair productivity modules with speed modules on bulk goods — science packs, rocket parts.
• Note productivity modules raise power draw — balance with efficiency modules.

Endgame: The Space-Age Rocket#

Final Research#

The endgame research priorities:

• Automate production science and utility science (yellow), so research runs at full load.
• Research rocket technology to unlock the Rocket Silo.
• Craft the satellite once researched.

Assembling the Rocket#

The rocket silo is the single win-condition structure; produce parts continuously:

• The big three: low-density structure (LDS), rocket fuel, and rocket control units (RCU), feeding the silo in a loop.
• The fuel and part pipelines get huge — slot in productivity modules generously to reduce raw demand.

Once the rocket is loaded with parts, the final step is placing the satellite in the rocket — and igniting!

A successful launch = victory. The “Space Age” achievement unlocks.

Beyond the Win (Space Age DLC)#

Launching the rocket is only the end of the base game. With the Space Age DLC installed, the goal changes from “leave this planet” to “run an entire solar system”:

• After leaving Nauvis, travel to the forge world Vulcanus, the scrapyard Fulgora, the fungal Gleba, and the frozen Aquilo.
• Each planet has its own resources and mechanics; the new “planet → space platform → destination” chain stretches the game significantly.
• Space Age adds the quality system — see the Space Age hub page for details.

Base-game-only players can still chase the leaderboards after victory, pushing high SPM or full achievements.

Progress Blocker Troubleshooting#

The Victory Path at a Glance#

Follow this order and your plan advances step by step from “fill the furnace row” to “leave the planet behind”. Remember: Factorio has no end, only room to optimize — the rocket is just the starting line of the real design game.