(edit: as compact as it possibly can, within time budgets) I've been working on a program that lets you create Factorio layouts, without any user intervention. Just configure your recipes, along with desired amounts and it creates a fully working factory for you. Also supports some Space Age mechanics. You can try it out now.

There are actually two separate projects I would like to share with you:

1. Fully functioning base builder (images 1-5)

How it works, roughly:

• a linear program picks the recipes and machine counts (it handles by-products, oil cracking, productivity),
• simulated annealing places the machines, a router lays belts, undergrounds, splitters, inserters and pipes (the same negotiated-congestion algorithm computer chips are routed with), poles get placed, and an independent validator checks every belt lane, rate, and pipe before anything is saved,
• then it keeps shrinking the box for as long as its budget allows.

Big jobs can get split into blocks of custom size that are generated separately and stitched together. (images 3 and 5)

On single block builds it reaches about 110–130% area of my most compact hand-made designs. Hand-made designs still win and more compute has diminishing returns. I believe it works well as a proof of concept.

Space Age support is experimental: foundries, EM plants and biochambers work, meanwhile recyclers don’t, Gleba spoilage isn’t modelled, and Aquilo heating pipes are also not modelled.

You can set products and rates, machines per recipe type, belt and inserter tiers, which edge and coordinate each input and output uses, box size and shape, areas to leave empty, block size for big jobs, and the time budget. There are many, many more options in the README.

2 A bot mall optimizer

Using Google OR-Tools' CP-SAT solver, this finds optimal layouts for small malls and near-optimal ones for larger ones. Do note that solving complexity grows quickly.

You can set products and rates, quality, forbidden recipes, cells to leave empty, and where raw items arrive, with a weight per source to pull consumers closer to it.

I’ve had a chance to experiment with this in my own play through world, and the difficulty shifted to allowing as much throughput on rail as possible, with perfect timings.

It can dramatically help with city blocks designs

The idea is very similar to city blocks, and with just minor adjustments, it could reduce rail congestions. Specifically, for 174 about 5× less travel than a random layout, and the gap grows with size.

Try it out here

You can use Github codespaces (in the browser), which will automatically download all required dependencies. Otherwise you can use any operating system with Java 25. For help with configuration and running, LLM assistants are very useful.

Both are open source and any modifications are welcome, Github stars appreciated.

All the blueprint strings can be found in the READMEs:

v2 (belts): https://github.com/SeezoCode/factorio_optimizer_v2

v1 (bot malls): https://github.com/SeezoCode/factorio_optimizer

Quick links:

• Image 1 blueprint
• Image 2 blueprint
• Image 3 blueprint note: building it in game caught a bug with inserters on belt curves, now fixed.

Happy to answer questions. If you create or build one of the blueprints, I’d love to see it!

TL;DR now i don’t have to play the game i like to play so much

Minor Features

• Restored the fluid pipeline visualization when selecting an entity.
• Added "show fluid pipeline visualization when selected" interface setting, enabled by default.
• Added --test-save, --test-scenario, --test-ticks and --test-arg command line options.

Graphics

• Tweaked icons of simple coal liquefaction and acid neutralization recipes. more

Changes

• When holding a wire, only entities connectable with it are selectable. more
• Added Quickbar section to interface settings.

Bugfixes

• Fixed that tiles which changed slightly outside of the screen could draw their old state when they become visible. more
• Fixed that some prototype errors would not show the manage mods button. more
• Fixed that input and output cargo hatch counts were reversed in tooltips.
• Fixed that clicking the current research button didn't always open the technology GUI to the current research. more
• Fixed a crash during sprite loading when a sprite path was invalid and some tile-effect prototypes were partially loaded. more
• Fixed that robots would try to insert modules before the machine was able to hold them. more
• Fixed that space platforms could get stuck trying to insert modules before the machine was able to hold them. more
• Fixed a crash when destroying a locomotive in a simulation while train GUI was open. more
• Fixed tips-and-tricks image loading when opening the tip from chat. more
• Fixed a crash in map view related to entity invalidation while searching. more
• Fixed space platform not dropping trash on arrival when all its requests were restricted to the same planet. more
• Fixed a crash related to raising events for units added to unit group or removed from unit group. more
• Fixed a crash when a unit tried to go around another unit whose target died in the same tick. more
• Fixed out of map tile was missing absorption of other pollutants. more
• Fixed tight spots level 4 had some resources too rich. more
• Fixed that opening search via the hotkey in multiplayer and then quickly typing didn't work well. more
• Fixed that the joining/loading/catching up GUI did not size correctly when mods were involved and multiple players were joining at the same time. more
• Fixed that crushers had emissions and heating energy defined when they never used them. more
• Fixed a crash when using request-to-save-and-quit in headless mode. more
• Fixed that migrations could mix fluids of different temperatures within crafting machines. more
• Fixed a performance regression with fluid flow on certain save files. more

Scripting

• Added LuaBootstrap::finish_test() and LuaBootstrap::test_arg.

Previous changelog: Version 2.1.23

New versions are released as experimental first and later promoted to stable. If you wish to switch to the experimental version on Steam, choose the experimental Beta Participation option under game settings; on the stand-alone version, check Experimental updates under Other settings.

Me and my friends bothered to complete our first space age run and saw the pop up for the galaxy of fame. We where shoked to see that we were allowed to see othere pepoles saves and its amazing but why does nobody ever mention it. I think its an underappreciated part of the game and i think it should get more spotlight.

Also honoroble mention to Shizuko with the longest factorio run ever at 17583 hours
https://factorio.com/galaxy/Iron%20IV:%20Delta1-3.D2T5
I really want to se that save cuz the map only gives so much

How fast can you find out if there's a problem with the piping?

One underground pipe is missing from the Petroleum Gas line.

Since this new method highlights ALL pipelines, it does nothing to help identify this. In fact, it works againt us by making it seem that all lines are connected.

And no, I don't think going through each of the five lines clicking checkboxes or pressing keys is a decent solution.

Bring back mouseover display.

Which one of you awesome mfers did this?

I logged into my server after a long while because I was excited about the 2.1 changes. I guess I forgot how to do some things. It happened right before I was going to bed, now I don't want to play and I don't want to go to bed either.

Lesson is, do not turn on auto targeting on artillery turrets while you are having an attack. It just attracts more enemies and they group up to destroy you.

Hello again, I finished all the vehicles I needed for my mod.

Like before - all the art assets mod are available here, which are all used in Factorio+

In order top-left -> bottom-right:
Rail : Solar Train, Equipment Wagon, Small Cargo Wagon.
Watercraft : Hovercraft, Dinghy.
Vehicles: Dozer, Transporter, Half Track (HMG), Speeder, ATV.

Fully animated, masked, and heck, even elevated slope support!

Enjoy! (or not - I'm not your dad)

This is an improvement to my previous criss-cross Gleba layout

( https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1x9r0zw/gleba_starter_base_100_spm/ )

but more effective in terms of science production (500+ spm but whole science area can be copy-pasted on the sides to triple the production, there are plenty of Bioflux on a belts) as well as being rocket-parts ready and producing Gleba-related unique resources (carbon-fiber, stack inserters, biochambers and rocket turrets)

Whole base works on belts/splitters and inserters, bots required only to load rockets with science/resources.

I send water barrels and iron ore up from nauvis. Carbon comes from a second platform that produces nothing else. The empty barrels get discarded, I don’t send them back down.

I've tried Space Age multiple times since it's release, but always got stuck somewhere along the way. I had 100% achievements before Space Age, this time I was going to make it!

A special thank you to all who share helpful guidance, blueprints and map strings. I have almost 1500 hours in Factorio and this community is awsome! Thanks also to Wube for such a wonderful game!

Galaxy of Fame

I did not craft or use a fusion reactor, nor capture a biter spawner and obviously no biolab. Did not use quality. I managed with 60-80 spm for a good chunk of the run up to the end. I didn't have to deal with biters on Nauvis with the map string below and didn't trigger the pantapods on Gleba (only 4 agricultural towers). For Vulcanus, Fulgora and Gleba I used all in one starter bases with Gleba being the bottleneck in science procurement. They also provided with resources needed for Aquilo, which I wasn't able to find a similar starter base so my Aquilo base is not self-suficient (had to bring in blue chips and low density structures from Nauvis for rocket parts). Ran out of water and power a few times on Aquilo until I managed to fix that.

This guide on this subreddit was super helpful. The map string I used came from this blueprint by bob.factorio (but I didn't use the blueprint itself). I went in order from Nauvis > Vulcanus > Fulgora > Gleba for the inner planets.

Hope this is helpful even if this is probably blasphemy in front of the Factory Must Grow™ gods.

Technology

• Physical projectile damage 9
• Weapon shooting speed 6 (max)
• Stronger explosives 9
• Railgun damage 1
• Railgun shooting speed 0

Blueprints

• Everything you need for Nauvis (Space Age Mall crafts over 170 items from ores to endproduct) by 83Ramy (I put down layer 4 from the start, but built it gradually)
• Starter Early Mall v1.1 by myself (helped to build the everything mall and science)
• All 100 SPM. Nauvis science book by Space Ghost (I didn't actually build the whole thing, initialy enough for 25 spm and grew it gradually to 60 and 80 spm)
• 10/m Construction robots 25*25 by Rasmus9110 (get those bots early to help build everything)
• Vulcanus Starter Base by Jepakazol (just noticed I was using an older version)
• Fulgora Starter Factory by Jepakazol
• Gleba Starter Factory by Jepakazol
• Aquilo starter by AbsoCZ
• Aquilo Self-Heating 240SPM starter module by Anonymous
• Easy normal quality Edge ship by Wobbleland (I had about 9k regular ammo and 6k or 7k rocket and 200 railgun ammo, was able to go from Nauvis to Edge and back with 0 damage)
• Basic Ship (Space Age) by Matias Lozano
• Basic Ship no walls by myself (I had issues with Matias ship, made some slight adjustments)
• Space science 100 SPM. Space science pack by Space Ghost
• The Smelting & Refining Book by Dangwiggums
• Basic Rocket Builder Spaceage by SlappingTree (not hard to make it tilelable, I had 3 on Nauvis)
• Can't seem to find the nuclear power blueprint I'm using, it's a 480MW setup
• I did a small oil/sulfuric acid setup to mine uranium and provide oil for rocket parts, it's badly optimised.

Map string

    >>>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<<<

3D printed and very sturdy. Printed everything in the correct orientation to get maximum strength.

I thought i can have multiple of these like this so i'll have many furnaces with productivity while they also retain being fast, is this useful? if half of a belt isnt enough, i can use two belts and use long inserters as well

I’m continuing to build out my C.U.B.E. city-block system, and this time I made an advanced oil processing block. Overall it has 6 stations: two inputs for crude oil and water, and four outputs for heavy oil, light oil, petroleum gas, and lubricant.

I really like how it turned out visually, as the block status and fluid levels are super easy to read at a glance. The refining setup itself is taken directly from my "O.I.L." blueprint book, so I didn't need to rethink the ratios. I added the heavy oil station just in case I need to boot up coal liquefaction later using trains, even though I don't plan to export heavy oil heavily since solid fuel is better made from light oil.

How do you guys handle oil processing in your city blocks? Would love to see how your setups look!

All My Blueprints: https://fprints.xyz/user/177bc5fb-4dd4-43a5-bd9e-e46b9edfb87c

C.U.B.E. Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1x4g0at/cube_compact_universal_block_expansion_96x96_city/

O.I.L. Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1twh2e3/oil_optimized_industrial_liquids_allinone/

It only needs 60–90 seconds to prepare for interplanetary flights at maximum speed. I tested it on flights between Gleba and Fulgora, as well as with Level 5 Firing Speed and Level 5 Gun Damage technologies.

BP: FactorioBin

Blueprint for anyone interested:
https://factoriobin.com/post/q19d0i

As far as I can tell this is the smallest space platform to reach shattered planet with no damage in Space Age 2.1. It was a clencher. Only had 80 fusion fuel cells left of 600 before departing solar system edge. Now I have to send my larger, faster shattered planet platform with a ton of fusion fuel cells on board to conduct recon. In what will be the worlds first platform to platform transfer at shattered planet!

The power of combinator logic compels me!

GG Factorio!

Finished the factorio demo yesterday. Very generous amount of gameplay in the demo, felt almost unfair to get so much free.

Just got to say: What an absolute belter of a game. Devs should be proud...hats off.

Bought the game immediately.

Any advice?

I'm in the process of creating a mod that is trying to add a little bit more difficult to Vulcanus, since it's by far the easiest planet. I want the mod to essentially be "Vanilla+", so I'm trying not to actually add new buildings or items, just tweak things using existing stuff.

With that being said, while trying to think about ways to add difficulty to Vulcanus, I realized that fluid temperatures seem really under-utilized in the game. I was thinking about making it so that the steam you get from doing acid neutralization is higher than 500C (so it couldn't go in a turbine), and I realized that the only good way to lower the temperature of a fluid is to mix it with other fluids.

I also thought about the fact that we literally have a perfect candidate for fluid temperature mechanics (fluoroketone), and yet instead its literally split into two different fluids that are just "hot" and "cold" versions.

I feel like it would have been kind of cool to lean into fluid temperatures more. Making them actually matter in certain recipes, giving the player some way to remove heat from a fluid instead of just add it (like a reverse heat exchanger).

We can read the temperature with circuits so I'm sure people would have gotten up to some cool stuff!

Also, if anyone has any good ideas for how to add heat-related difficulty to Vulcanus, feel free to drop them below.

I don't have utility science yet, so that's why it has lots of lasers and turrets.

Edit: blueprint, if you're interested: https://factoriobin.com/post/e3p8yu

(Please don't tell me if it will crumble, I will find that out in the next few minutes)

I feel like the aspect I will tinker with the most going forward is how to balance the normal/advanced crushing recipes. I don't know what the "meta" is for that, I guess once I have ridiculous productivity and legendary everything it would be easiest to just always use the advanced recipe and void excess?

I do feel pretty proud of how much fat I was able to trim off this ship. I ended up using pretty much exclusively rare machines (I know I can research epic quality but then I'd have to redesign all my upcyclers and that sounds like a hassle)

Before anyone asks, yes, this is heavy on AI. However, it was fun to make and it's possible to improve further, so I wanna share this with the community.
The video was recorded on an Oppo Find N5 with a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor.
Also, current performance isn’t an indicator at all, but this is the result without any optimizations in the code. Thanks u/VanishedMC for helping with the testing!
https://github.com/Portalboy07/factorio-on-android

I'm playing a mod that has my constantly building and rebuilding a burner city. I have bots, so they can do the miners and smelters just fine. I'd like for them to deliver fuel as well, but it seems like I can only have them bring a stack, and that is too slow (and there's only so much inventory space).

Is it possible to have them bring less?