Factorio 1.0 / 0.18 Tutorial - Inserter, Belt & Splitter Mechanics: New Player Guide

[@zythotv]

All these videos so the fellow engineer can grow their factories. *salutes*

[@Xterminator]

The factory must grow!

[@beckaliz]

Didn’t know this about underground belts splitting lanes! Very helpful

[@fiskrond9212]

@Xterminator.. thanks for vid.. most of the other YT basics/tutorials seem to be centered around the creator indulging their own ego rather than providing any meaningful help to the average noob. Cheers dude!

[@philipbossy4834]

Thanks for these videos. Even though I passing the few hundred hour mark in the game I still pick up a detail here and there, and it helps to get improved designs. Don't know if you covered in elsewhere, but it could have been nice to show a visual of belt speed/density by having two full yellow belts each side load on a red or blue belt.

[@Serenjyn]

I gave up on Factorio several months ago, not that I didn’t love the game but each time I reached oil and trains I became overwhelmed. I’ve always enjoyed your videos and they were the first ones I watched when I originally came to the game back in April, 2019. With the release of 1.0 I decided to take another look and am so happy you’re doing both a new vanilla playthrough and this tutorial series. Hope springs eternal and perhaps this time I’ll push further into the game. It’s been awhile since I’ve followed you and I recall that you were dealing with some health issues, digestive I believe. How are you doing? Thanks for all the work, and love, you pour into your Factorio videos. You empower a lot of people through your efforts and should take great pride in what you do.

[@xswing]

did you go manage to go past trains?

[@asdrofllmao]

Super useful video, thanks for that! Really enjoying you covering these non-obvious beginner basics.

[@chrinschbro]

Hi everyone I wish you all a beautiful and successful day

[@ashc4h488]

you too buckaroo

[@NotDwight]

I hope you also had a beautiful and successful day 3 years ago :)

[@chrinschbro]

@@NotDwight of course I did. Thank you very much for asking :)

[@NotDwight]

Thank you for the video! I'm getting into this and your explanations were great.

[@DavidLindes]

5:10 - It seems you're reading the 7 and 9 right off the screen, so understandable that you said this, however, what you said is misleading! The problem is, you called the transport/yellow belt gap 4, yet the tool tip for it says 5. So by the way you were demonstrating it, rapid/red belt should be 6 (not 7), and express/blue should be 8 (not 9). The "Max length" listed in the tool tip is the length the underground "travels" - one more than what it "clears".

[@Xterminator]

Very good observation and indeed a misleading mistake by me. Thanks for the correction. :)

[@DavidLindes]

Xterminator gladly! I hope it's helpful in the future for you, and/or seen here, for others.

[@thatguywastakenagain]

First things first: I really appreciate the effort to make the game accessible for new players! Now for the criticism. Try to put in some more work in structurizing your tutorials - they have to be as short and concise as possible, keep the information flowing in an order that builds up and makes sense. I think you could present the same amount of information in roughly 10 minutes - after all you are trying to save us a bunch of time! A great add to the end would be showing some more examples of the mechanics being used to illustrate why knowing these thing are so important and crucial to the game (especially splitter. I am pretty sure I criminally underuse them currently)

[@GretchenDawntreader]

might want to put 2+2 together for those of us with the confused looks on our faces in the back, when you showed that an inserter will prefer to take from the near lane and not the far lane as long as the near lane has a constant stream of items, as in the coal/iron ore belt feeding the furnaces, it will happily reach over the solid (near) lane of coal and get some ore when the furnace is ready to accept an ore. Apologies if you said exactly that and I just missed it.

[@TheWilku22]

Thanks for these videos and let's plays! Btw, will you do tutorial videos about signals?

[@Xterminator]

My pleasure! I will attempt to! Signals and trains are definitely a weaker part of the game for me, so I may only be able to cover the basics on that stuff.

[@TheWilku22]

@@Xterminator Great, can't wait!

[@SpudsMcCat]

pendantic, but splitter splits evenly up to the capacity/speed of the belt it's feeding into. so a blue belt feeding a blue splitter will fill both a red and yellow belt leaving the spliter (giving a 2:1 split)

[@hindigente]

This was surprisingly informative, thanks! :)

[@Xterminator]

You're welcome! Happy it helped. :)

[@laurenrolfe2314]

Helped me out, great, thanks :)

[@sylwuu5480]

20:09 you can zoom more under F4 scroll down to the bootom and you'll have there "allow increased zoom" :P

[@dragonpc8258]

only thing you left out was the second way to use the undergrounds for single sided belt loading. by placing an underground sideways at the end of a transport belt then hovering over it and pressing R you can "reverse" the flow of items on that underground belt allowing you to use one underground instead of two and also run more transport belts from its output without undergrounding again. (hope this makes sense, as it's hard to describe in words without the visual aide) (also you left out that you can reverse underground belts by pressing R when hovering over them, just like rotating most buildings in the game once placed.)

[@thatguywastakenagain]

could you try to demonstrate that visually?

[@dragonpc8258]

@@thatguywastakenagain sorry, not this guy. it would take me a year to do it, i'd first have to find someone who is competent in it to teach me, then learn it. then apply it. lol

[@thatguywastakenagain]

@@dragonpc8258 ok do you have any ressources where I can try to learn myself?

[@dragonpc8258]

@@thatguywastakenagain the first time i saw it was in a blueprint, it's often used in tight spaces where a nice clean 90 degree is needed of only one side of a belt. i wish i could explain better in words, but it really is difficult, and would likely take up a book worth of trying to explain in different ways. the worst part is once you see it, it's super simple and get it right away.

[@thatguywastakenagain]

@@dragonpc8258 By any chance do have any blueprint using this lying around to pastebin me?

[@herbiefirst9574]

My Puzzle? I have a transport belt with 15 items/s and 9 inserters with 302°/s. That gives a total rotation of 2718° and that divided by 360° means 7.55 stacks of 3 items, i.e. 22.65 items. The Transport Belt is thus cleared. According to my calculation, however, 15 items with 6 inserters (6*302/360 = 5,033 stacks) would empty the transport belt. Where did I think wrong, since with 6 transport belts a lot remains on the belt?!

[@hamedd3396]

Thanks

[@_CJ_]

Well, I feel a bit torn with this tutorial. While video quality is nice (as always) tutorial itself feels like you did not have much time to prepare yourself. Instead of saying we should imagine you should build it prior this video, make a lot of small examples you just talk about and did not show (it is time consuming and I can see that you were thinking about it if you should build or how to show it). E.g. how to undegrounds, splitter for joining, splitter for balancing sides of one belt, rotating belt and replacing one on ground (to show you dont need to destroy it before correcting direction), changing side of belt so you can join something from side (classic situation in factory builds).... Also don't unlock all techs like inserter stacks if you don't show inserters much - there is like one mechanic of inserters and nothing else (like showing all types and quick compare and compare filter inserter and splitter with filter)... I hope I'm not too picky, just want to help and I hope this is constructive critics for you - make better draft of what you want to say and more examples to show so you dont need to think on your feet... you spent a lot of time explaining instead of showing and in the end this tutorial is quite long but not covering that much well tutorials are very hard topic to master and you are on good way :) fingers crossed and good luck with next one!

[@gregroberti]

completely agree with the points raised here. I thought certain parts were way over explained to the point of being repetitive while other parts were rushed and not simply put no matter how many times I went back to rewatch. Appreciate your effort in making this series, looking forward to seeing the more advanced concepts explained clearly.

[@Xterminator]

Interesting. I actually thought I prepared things fairly well, but perhaps I'm too close to it to realize the flaws in how it was presented. Now granted, there were times where I definitely had to do some stuff on the fly and for some instances that isn't great as you mention and needs improving on, but in other situations I think some of this stuff is hard to demonstrate well with setup done ahead of time, and is best shown in real time. That is just my perspective though. Hopefully you didn't find the tutorial too horrible, and I will keep trying to improve with each one! As you said, tutorials are tricky and sometimes a little trial and error to see how the community prefers to have it presented and then working off that.

[@_CJ_]

@@Xterminator :) as with factorio the best is the story how you are getting better not just finished product. We are not factorio beginners and I agree that it is very hard to understand what is most important for new guys as they interact with game in any imaginable and also unimaginable ways (factorio team knows that too :D) Overall it was ok, you explained basic stuff and anyone who tries it should have no problems. But when you go into a bit advanced things and edge cases it was not that clear - one picture is for thousand words. With pre-prepared examples - if you feel something is more complex or you want explain some mechanic just build it next to finished example and say something about it (like why is it this way, why are you doing it, where you use it). So viewer will have both finished thing and the process and most importantly it can be compared while you building it so you can spot all the tricks :) (also with bigger builds it is hard to understand at first how it works) Glad you take it well. Hope this will help you and what I say is not something nobody wants :D trial and error is the good and quick way how to get better so keep on! Looking forward to next one ;)

[@EverNaughty]

Really good guide for beginners ;)

[@Xterminator]

Thank you! I'm happy to hear it's helping people out. :)

[@EverNaughty]

@@Xterminator I know you since a while, and it's a good opportunity with the 1.0 release :)

[@dutchreaper3069]

Thanks again X. if I may suggest, just do the basic stuff. And when you hit advanced stuff in you play through Episodes, make a Tutorial New Player Guide with that stuff. hope it makes sense what I'm saying. :)

[@AlterMuller]

I second that. Keeping the playthrough and tutorial series in sync in terms of introducing new concepts would make for the most organic way to teach newbies about the game.

[@Xterminator]

While I do agree, my thought here with go more in depth in these videos is to give the information without having having to dig through it in a let's play. I like to cover it in both the let's play and these stand alone videos, but I want to make these type of vids as comprehensive as possible in case people are looking for info on just this topic, and may not even realize I cover it in my let's play. Hope that makes sense. :)

[@dutchreaper3069]

@@Xterminator yes, it makes sense to me.

[@herbiefirst9574]

Thank you for this video! Can you please tell me where I can get the "purple infinity generator" (8:21) and how I can then use this mod in my test environment. Thanks in advance!

[@herbiefirst9574]

I have found it: Mod "Editor Extensions"! It is a very nice mod for testing...

[@alp50ae]

How do you solve the half belt consumption with side loading ? because you send a full belt of material to side load, but only one side goes through, so there are back ups of material on one side and no materials on the other. It bothers me when branching off my main bus with split materials. Thanks !

[@Xterminator]

Well if one side is still backed up then there shouldn't be any issues with an actual supply. I definitely can agree that visually its quite frustrating though. Not a great way to fix if that I can think of besides splitting off in a way that doesn't involve side loading or use a one belt balancer where you put a splitter on the belt and then have the other splitter output side load back on to the side of the belt that's empty.

[@S_Black]

Look for "lane balancer". Specifically the input or I/O balanced version (not an output balancer). But they are rarely really necessary

[@walldeaf196]

a better example for input priority was to drop wood on a coal belt :) Still a good vid though.

[@hindigente]

One question, what does the inserter option "override stack size" do?

[@2HARD4UR]

After some research you can make inserters pick up more than 1 item at the time. Standard it wil pick up the max items it can at the time, with the override you can lower it.

[@hindigente]

@@2HARD4UR Thanks! At first I thought it referred to the standard stack it could place *into* things like furnaces or assembling machines, but after some testing I realized that that was not the case. Thanks for clarifying.

[@Xterminator]

Looks like someone else answered your question very well! My apologies for not covering this in the video. I very very rarely use this feature, so honestly I completely forget it exists sometimes. Woops!

[@hindigente]

@@Xterminator It's understandable since this detail is also missing from the inserter entry in the Wiki.

[@Griexxt]

@@hindigente I have a setup for the Kovarex enrichment process that uses this function because the way it's set up I need to be able to control the exact number of items that are moved between a number of boxes. But other than that kind of situation it's hard to think of any use for it.

[@willjones1696]

How do you get the infinite loaders/consumers?

[@dragonpc8258]

it's a mod meant for this kind of thing. it's like a creative mod to easily show others things without having to actually build out a factory. it's called something like cheat mod or creative mod i think.

[@NightmareCrab]

need a phd to play this game fuck