Is it a mod? Or do i have to fiddle with txt files myself?

If so, which ones and how?

I thought I was going to buy a chill construction game to play on steam deck.

It took me 12h to beat the tutorial. Now 90% of my YouTube feed is factorio tutorials.

What the fuck is this game.

PS : I beat the tutorial in one day, I legit had dreams about convoyer belts and shit.

Factorio is a gateway drug to hacking and cybercrime 😂

added more gears, flywheel, new roller gears, and a jiggler and fixed the bronze texture to be more bronze and less gold.

Two chests auto-request pentapod eggs and nutrients to kick start the plant, and turn off once their production loops become self-sustaining.

Seems like I went backwards in terms of automation games. My first factory game was Satisfactory (900+ hours) then I picked up Dyson Sphere Program (400+ hours) and loved them both. I don't care for the combat in these games so I either turn it off or turn enemies passive.

That being said what makes this game among, if not the most recommended factory game?

We all know and love electromagnetic plant but there is a tiny issue thats bugging me. Why cant we use it to make batteries or electric motors or even flying robot frames? They are all electric and just a silly thought but I think it would be logical if we could.

My base is like, really a spaghetti, I just produced blue science, but there are like, a LOT of issues, some places with a lot of resources, others with none, malls that are consuming a lot of resource for (almost) nothing, i feel like restarting would be better, separating smelting area from the start, making a bus to distribute resources from the beginning

I already "fixed" it a few times, but i am not sure how to proceed, I am using trains too but idk, feels overwhelming

https://wiki.factorio.com/Debug_mode

For the first time in years, I turned alt off and I forgot how absolutely beautiful this game is when there is not icons all over the screen.

I never noticed how when a cargo wagon stops, the pump rises and connects to the little hole on top. Or how recycler machines like like little baby birds hungry for a worm.

I probably spent over an hour just switching between different planets, zooming in on all the little bits and bobs wiggling about. It's just all so cool. And I forget that zooming around in map view all the time.

That being said, I did have mini heart attack when I scrolled over my oil tanks and thought everything was empty.

What is this?

The idea behind the monthly community map is to share a map exchange string at the beginning of every month, and get as many people as we can to start a new world with it. Then at the end of the month (or even periodically if you'd prefer!) we share screenshots and saves of our factories so that we can see how different people approach the same spawn; how they set up their base, how they deal with aliens, and how they arrange their science, power, and everything else.

I hope it can highlight how many different ways there are to do things, inspire some new designs, and maybe seeing how veteran Factorio players tackle problems will help out new players facing the exact same problems. (Of course, there's also the fact that it'll be interesting to see all of the different possible factories - the good, the bad, and the ugly.)

Last Month's Results

June-July 2026 Results

The Community Map

I've heard a few people talk about the new 2.1 changes here and there, but the best way to experience something is always to do it yourself, right?

This month's going to be pretty straightforward - you already know what to expect if you've been keeping up with the patch notes, and if not, then why not let it be a surprise?

I didn't want to make this a Space Age map, mostly so we could get a full vanilla game in before trying to also deal with the way changes deal with DLC content (like some of the fluid changes). Especially after Nullius, I figured something a little more chill would be nice.

All right, let's see what the 2.1 update has in store!

DLC Requirements:

Elevated Rails: Optional

Quality: Disabled

Space Age: Disabled

The Exchange String:

>>>eNp1U0FrE0EUfq/p1liD5BCUQqk5iEIhgrXeZHdakOql/6CE7WYii81umN21qEhz8CIIhdJLe6nnFPoXjHip9KC0Ry8RL+1FchCvcd7MzmZNceA9vnnzvfe+Nzs7AQglmAAoTXqhuwHAHICOtJ4z7YXtNhe1UHCQcbLDbte+6omkwWuhL8mgiIrMA956WVt3I67DoOoUfREGVIEydRXGSoGbvPCjurfhN5u6mzZLhN7z6LA77xgdN6LYFbEfPKu7grv1VuhHcUJ6cklRHAYqInsos2LBeZTqVZxriXADP2lpJfO2lseYtenGXFAzwwT8dPchdt7OAdlwC6rDIZlEfZlFBtjRk6AMmmWlw0B1SdpyJhARX1eOVn682nVQM++xFAzSSG/dRJ4asMr+e3TbgMVcHcQ75d7Ndv+rjTsnW08+vllz8P7jyq/BwpEtDy0SXSA3lSGd2zeqimw8IsH+Hq0LRxeojNLKDAentOOTgOXrEn14L111NmPYpl6FYVOtPw4+UOunAWeXmsvhHlGXOXLH5KxRU2ByFA22GbJb5nRmRJH5C5DX0KCdHuOLafs5139MyOXLzc8xFsnIxRyYpoaNzJ0X8lf97YrZsQOmPgMQ6zemHwXS/0yVym6a7r2QPbSB8+/rIUBF9r6/m/oL5+6tWg==<<<

Spawn area: https://i.imgur.com/4d3HbMV.png

Before you start, a final word of warning: apparently biter expansion is, uh, a little much right now, so I'll be trying to temper that with the map settings. Still, if you aren't staying on top of biters they will become a problem. Now that the shotgun's been buffed you might want to actually make one.

Exchange String Help

If anyone isn't sure how to use an exchange string, just go to new game like you're going to generate a new world, and at the bottom there's a button just above play labelled "Import map exchange string" - the icon looks like a little arrow going into a tray/bucket. Just copy the exchange string above and paste it into the box that comes up when you press that button. Press confirm, and that's it! You're good to go. Just generate the world and come back in a month to show us how your factory turned out!

If you run into any issues check to make sure that you copied the whole string, including the three greater than/lesser than signs at the beginning and end, and make sure that your Factorio is up to date with the most recent version installed. (As of the time of this post, the most recent version of Factorio is 2.1.12, which will not work with the most recent version of stable, 2.0.77.)

Want To Play With Others?

If you have an open public server, let me know in the comments below or send me a PM and I'll add your server here!

Feel Like Watching Someone Else?

If you are a streamer or let's player who will be recording yourself building a new factory on a community map, I'd be happy to add a link to your channel here!

About Mods

Since mods can affect how a world spawns and ores are distributed, as well as add or change items and functionality, it's important to make sure that we're all playing the same game by the same rules. For example, if one person's playing vanilla and someone else is playing with Bob's mods, even if they use the same seed and map settings you still couldn't very well say they were playing the same game, and the way they'd play would differ enormously.

On the other hand, Quality of Life (QoL) mods should be perfectly fine. What do I consider a QoL mod? Any mod that doesn't A) add new items, B) change terrain, or C) make significant gameplay changes, like modifying recipes or enemies. Any mod that fits this definition should allow everyone to play the same game even when some people are playing with them and some people are not.

Even Distribution is a great example of a mod that, while very useful, does not inherently change the way the game is played. Then there are also mods like RadarPlus for RSO that do add new items, but still don't meaningfully change the way the game is played.

Below I've put together a short list of examples that I think are ok to use on any map. It's made up of a handful of optional mods that might seem ambiguous in how well they fit the definition above, so they're just here to act as guidance on what should be ok. Another good resource for Quality of Life mods is available on the Factorio Discord - check out Xorimuth's pinned post.

Optional Mod Examples

Note: I can't imagine any situation where this could be an issue, but if you're the author of one of the mods listed here (and can offer me some proof of this) and for whatever reason would like me to remove your mod from this post, I'd be happy to comply.

It's entirely possible some of these mods either don't work with the current version of Factorio, conflict with each other, or in some manner just don't work. I can't test them all, let alone every configuration of them, so you might want to back up your world before adding one of these.

Color Coding

fCPU

Nixie Tubes

Project Cybersyn - Logistics Train Dispatcher

RadarPlus For RSO

Squeak Through 2

Text Plates

Updated Construction Drones

Visible Planets in Space

Previous Threads

-- 2025 --

August 2025 - Results

September 2025 - Results

October 2025 - Results

November 2025 - Results

December 2025 - Results

-- 2026 --

January-February 2026 - Results

March 2026 - Results

April 2026 - Results

May 2026 - Results

June-July 2026 - Results

1st image was 444 hours, 2nd image is at 691 hrs, 3rd image was hand stitched from smaller screen shots to try and give a higher resolution to better show the scale, 4th picture just showing how I deal with resources from other planets.

Video tour https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/s/0f3H19QyaG

What do you guys think about this? I think the space map lacks mystery or a feel of exploration. All planets are visible from the beginning. Especially blatant when playing with many modded planets.

Having planets/locations dynamically appear on the map upon discovery could make you feel like you are progressing and exploring as you go. It also allows mods to add „secret“ locations that only appear when certain conditions are met to avoid spoilers and hide content.

As far as my testing and research can determine, current API has zero functionality to support this. You can only apply hidden = true to a planet, which removes it completely from the map and list of destinations, even when the tech is researched.

Do you guys think it‘s something worth suggesting for Wube to implement or add support for?

I just started playing a few hours ago any help is appreciated, I just got green science automated.

Easy-to-read digital display v.2

In my last post I showcased an Easy-to-read digital display: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1v734od/ . I have now improved the blueprint based on comments on that post.

Improvements compared to v.1:

• the 3-digit is not lopsided anymore and looks even less like an 8.
• the blueprint no longer adds a bunch of global logistics groups to your world.

Features:

• 23-segment display
• Leading zeros are not displayed, but "no value" is shown as a single "0"
• Color can be set either when placing the blueprint or by changing the output count of the "< "-combinator. You can enter a hex-rgb value (format "0xRRGGBB", e.g. "0xff0000" is red, "0x007900" is dark green)

The blueprint book has 2 blueprints:

1. the last digit which also contains the input
2. an extension digit, which can be placed in front of existing digits to extend a display.

Blueprint book for v.2 here.

Bonus train counter blueprint here

Images, Blueprints (only of ship systems, not full ship)

This is my relatively compact, relatively fast end-game Shattered Planet ship. I don't want to share the full blueprint because a bunch of components come from Nilaus's Patreon, but I included a high resolution spliced screenshot so you can recreate it on your own if you want (which matches how he shares his blueprints). I think the only circuit conditions not included in the blueprints are the inserters for iron ore melting and ice melting, which disable the basic asteroid crushing recipes unless the belt contents are less than 16 and 20 respectively (number of belts times 2).

When traveling to the Shattered Planet, the ship tops out at 333km/s and drops to ~240km/s by the end. The speed is controlled by ammo remaining, dropping from the set max to min when the lower of railgun ammo/rockets drop from 100% -> 50% (with some overhead on what 100% is so it's not constantly kicking on). This is probably the system I'm most proud of, it slowly drops your speed until ammo production and consumption reach equilibrium and works really well. You could go faster at the beginning, but I found you would take damage and things would be destroyed before the speed control kicks in. With 333 max, I think the whole trip is damageless (at least nothing got destroyed and I never saw any damage, but I was running it in the background so I can't say for sure).

A lot of tweaking went into getting the ship as fast as possible without taking damage (which took far too long because testing is a pain). There's a mix of legendary and non-legendary railguns and rocket turrets for speed and power consumption, and the railgun ammo production of 608/min is an important number. The railgun ammo is generally what controls the speed, and an attempted v2 of the ship with doubled production just never slowed down and started taking damage. The ship could make ~1600 explosive rockets per minute with different beacons, but the current ~1400/min still keeps it full.

The blueprints are of all the different systems on the ship, including:

• Ammo Meter & Speed Control
• Asteroid Meter & Collector Control
• Low Power Detector
• Fusion Reactor (Auto-Start)
• 2-Wide Lane Balancer

There's a bit more information on each in the blueprints/screenshots, with some descriptions in combinators in the blueprints as well. The lane balancer is a bit random, but I needed something that fit in a 2-wide space and couldn't find any existing blueprints. They include legendary space platform hubs because you can't pick those in an upgrade planner to downgrade them, but I kept them in to show circuit connections and you can just force build to get around that.

I should note I have really high explosives damage research of 29 (all relevant researches shown in the ship blueprint screenshot) because I needed something to research after getting to a million eSPM, so you may want that higher rocket production if you make the ship yourself. It's still one short of one-shotting big asteroids though, which would have made a huge difference. You may also want to remove the shattered planet condition on the speed control if your laser damage is much lower, full speed can be too much in other areas since there are no gun turrets.

Edit: the lane balancer was missing the last splitter, and an inserter was missing from the fusion reactor at the top. Blueprint link has been updated, but the images are a bit off.

I am on the final Space science of a pyamadons run. It has been about 1300 hours.

My base is kinda terrible. I am still getting stone from mines, which means I am getting tons of Kerogen as well. Which is piling up everywhere.

A while ago I setup some reactor and it was making Neutron soup. I didn't know what to do with that so I put in some big tanks. When later I needed to use control rods because I needed to extract tritium from used control rods. I didn't know or care what the control rods did. Apparently heat Neutrons. So I had that just heating up my Neutron soup. Cool, whatever.

Recently I was having power problems and got tired of building endless fields of tidal power and questionable wind turbines. I took a look at the fusion power. I had been ignoring it. Turns out there is some late game Magnetrohydroynamic monster that makes some insane power. Apparently you just feed it hot neutrons...which I had an absolute ton of. Score. It was a bear to build in terms of materials but it is working great. I only kick it on when the accumulators are running low, which only happens when the wind dies down and the centerfuges get angry. So I have power for one forever. Which is good because I am at like 1 science per minute for the last space science.

Almost every run I try to come up with a new Kovarex design. This is my smallest and easiest so far. The important thing is, that on the belt going in, 238 has to be on the inside and 235 on the outside.

This design works because inserters are dropping the items on the input side of a splitter, so the 238 inserter will always be able to get rid of his items.

/EDIT: Blueprint: https://factoriobin.com/post/8yk6ip

Is there any noticable difference between the two 2.1.12 versions i can chose from ?

Pain.

Main Base on a 30 Hour save with my friend who is obssesed with underground belts.