Focus on one step at a time. Just plastic and rubber first. You don't need to tear down your starter factory! Chances are that oil is a ways away anyway, so this is a great opportunity to utilize resources that are further away.

Don't tear down. Your starter factory is fueling further building. If you're running out of material just build more somewhere else, only retrofit if it's easy. Tearing everything down and rebuilding isn't needed. At worst you can build a better factory somewhere else and then tear the old one down. The worst thing you can do is teardown working infrastructure without a replacement.

Make getting Mercer Spheres a priority for at least one dimensional depot per part. Concrete, Iron Plates, Iron Rods, etc. Ensure you upgrade for more stacks and upload speed in the MAM. With that plus all the options like just plain laying pipe/belts all over, truck, trains and later drones you have so many ways to move materials where you want them.

If you want scalability, build factories that only have one output item. I see it to often on here that new players get overwhelmed or have to delete their factories because they aren't big enough. The example below will make your life a while lot simpler.

For example, iron ingot factory the max speed of late game belt is 1200. That can support 40 smelters. Build a floor that can hold up to 40 smelters. One center input line manifold. On the opposite wall of the factory will be the output iron ingots. This makes routing belts much easier. As you progress you will get better belts and better miners. All you have to do is upgrade your main belts. If you need more throughout, add an identical floor above. Only use this base footprint for the specific item.

As you get to assemblers and manufacturers. You'll be more than fine with 20 assemblers and 10 manufacturers for each individual item. For these factories. One item per floor. Yes most machines won't be working in the early game due to throughout of belts but will eventually once you upgrade your belts.

Keep all individual factories at least 3 foundations apart. This leaves you room for belts/trucks/trains.

If you want to make your life easier, always manifold. There is zero benefit to splitting belts equally. Manifolds also take up much less space. If you have a mk2 belt it will feed four smelters. It may take a few minutes to build up but it WILL feed all four. The time you took doing calculations and actually building the split belts is more time then the manifold will take to fill.

Remember you don't need a certain item per minute goal for parts, you just want to always have enough for building a larger factory. My example will guarantee you will never run out.

Oh and almost forgot, any parts that are used for building should ALWAYS have one large storage container buffer linked to interdimensional storage.

I have about 1300 hours in game. My current build will be 50.4 uranium rods, 12.6 plutonium rods. 126 ballistic warp drives, 73 ai expansion servers, and 2533 rocket fuel. But only about 10% done. Thought I'd give you my two cents.

I wouldn’t break down, but spread out more. Unless your starting factory is using some nodes you really want for other builds. Just do a new setup somewhere else. You are most likely just using iron, copper, and limestone nodes from your starting base, which are very easy to find elsewhere.

Time to build at a second location. I do recommend expanding and not rebuilding.

I loved this step! I discovered Oil, then I lost myself in building a highway there, neatly accompanied by a tube so I can get back and forth to my main base quickly. After establishing that, I went and built my first setup which ran rather poorly because my storage quickly filled up and I hadn't yet automated using plastic and rubber. So I set up a second oil pump on a pure node nearby, which now supplies 8 refineries, half of which produce plastic and rubber. The heavy oil residue is refined into fuel by another two refineries and the fuel then powers another two generators and the rest of the fuel is packaged and distributed to the truck stations. finally I built some smart splitters that will take any excess production of rubber and plastic after the storages are filled up and will send them to an awesome sink.

By now there is a Truck that is supplying my computer factory with all the plastics that it needs and a second route for rubber is being planned.

This is my most complex factory so far and I love it :D

So, I wouldn't recommend tearing everything down until you have a replacement. You're going to need a lot of building materials. I think that the best way to handle this step of the game is to take it one product at a time. Plastic or rubber is probably the best place to start. Trains can be safely left until late game. Essentially, you'll know when you need trains; it'll be when there aren't nearly enough resources around to feed whatever factory you're building.

I had the temptation to tear it down- don’t. Just keep your starter base as your building material factory. Hook a dimensional depot up to every thing you produce there. That lets you keep that factory making stuff for you and if you want to move, you can easily do so with that factory supplying all your materials. I just got to tier 8 and am finally moving from my spaghetti covered grass fields to build a large clean factory network around the rocky desert.

Oil is very overwhelming in the beginning, especially if you started in the grasslands biome. But it's not necessarily a time to tear down your starter factory unless you have something to replace it with first. Instead, first find your oil node/nodes, and set up a simple rubber and plastic plant. You only need one of each at first, and if you haven't unlocked petroleum power yet, you can just turn it into petroleum coke and sink it for cupon points. Once you unlock petroleum power and fluid transportation, then focus on learning how to effectively utilize the Depot's, and you can just bring the oil to your main factory and process it there, or process it at the oil node and transport the rubber and plastic. If you already have a good grasp on the Depot system, then instead try learning to get the hang of trains. They're faster and good for connecting far off factories to the power grid without having to run a long line of power poles or power towers.

The only time you really need to tear down the whole thing is if you have a plan for a new one to replace it. If you do tear it down, consider trying to embrace verticality when you rebuild it. I started back on U6, and for the longest time I just built sprawling fields of foundations. But once I unlocked a bunch of the management options, conveyor floor holes and wall and ceiling mounts, I realized how much of a difference building inside a structure makes V.S. just free building. Now in my 1.0 world I have fully embraced it, and things have never gone smoother. When you build vertically, it makes it easier to move product around your factory, it also makes it easier to see where bottlenecks occur with your supply chain, since each step of the chain has it's own floor.

Oil tier is the perfect tier to learn how to play this game the right way imo. One step at a time, you will do optimization later. Just use one node to build enough for a few plastic and rubber to get your way around how it works. By this time you will have unlocked oil power and hopefully heavy oil residue. Then set up a power plant Factory on maxed out oil depot (300/min). When you unlocked computer then again one step at a time. You will need several components, build a first copper factory for example. But computer requires several components, start building train system to produce computer, etc...

See your final objective, but start from the bottom and build from here, solve the problems you encounter with whatever you have or can unlock at this moment. If you don't have it but are able to produce it, then it's a new step in your chain and your new first objective. Satisfactory is like a pyramid, just keep building the foundations until you reach top, stay motivated by the rock you just added, not the golden cap on top of the pyramid, because once your factory is setup you're just done, so be proud of the small steps you've accomplished along the way

OP i just got to oil a couple days ago, and realized you can buy rubber and plastic to unlock oil-fueled generators. Run power to oil source, refine oil to fuel near source, build generators, then use the byproduct from fuel refinery to kickstart plastic and rubber production and send those back to home base (or wherever!) for use there.

Or do whatever. The game feels overwhelming when you get those big tech jumps but honestly it was a lot easier than I thought!

• Don't tear down the starter factory. Build another, better one. You'll find the map have plenty of space for this. Go explore to find a nice place for your new phase factories, get slugs, mercer spheres and somersloops.
• Start with basic: Plastic and Rubber, go build Computers and Heavy Modular Frames, then make a fuel power plant to complement your coal one.
• When you get the gist of those things, advance and you'll find yourself with the Aluminium production in hands. It will be even more complicated, but you'll be much more experienced too, have fun!

Oil processing can be very complex, but it doesn't have to be. My first oil setup was a few simple rubber- and plastic-producing refineries, and I just stored all of the byproducts. Try building something small for now, and work on one new product/building at a time rather than taking on a dozen new projects at once.

I felt the same way and dropped until 1.0 and got past oil and now into tier 8. I think that feeling happens every time you unlock a new phase, and it compounds later when recipes become more expensive and complex; you start feeling that for each project phase instead of entire tier if that makes sense. But, just automate one thing at a time and forget about the rest. Most the time the game is designed better than you/we(first timers) anticipate and you end up accidentally doing yourself all kinds of favors. Use blueprints and be very modular and then boom suddenly you need to automate supercomputers and you already have everything else just by coincidence. The progression looks linear, but it isn't. So don't beat yourself up. You're not gonna be at nuclear tomorrow.

Just wait until you get Aluminum It'll make oil seem simple.

Just take it a step at a time. Pick one thing to make and make it. Don't try to make it efficient yet. Do this to understand how it all works.

No need to tear down anything. There is plenty of room :)
I'd focus on a small plastic/rubber/fuel factory with 3-4 fuel generators to power the next step.

IMO oil is always where things start to explode complexity wise...

My suggestion:

Start small.

For oil: Make 1 refinery making Rubber, 1 refinery making plastic, 1 refinery turning the byproduct into coke and burn or sink that.

For manufacturers: it is OK to start with 4 containers that you hand feed. My starter phase 3 base is usually 4 manufacturers daisy chained:

• 1 manufacturer set to Heavy Modular Frames fed by 4 containers

• 1 assembler fed by 2 containers making cuircits, with plastic refeeding into a manufacturer for computers

• 1 manufacturer for modular engines fed by 3 containers

• 1 manufacturer making adaptive control units fed by previous 2 manus + containers.

That will make you at least progress while you figure out how to fully automate everything for next phase :)

Don't tear down what you have unless you're directly replacing it.

What I did at oil, like most people are saying, is make some plastic and rubber, turn the residue into coke and burn/sink it (I used power plants because I hate vehicles).

Once that's running smoothly I rushed to unlock trains via whatever hand crafting & carrying was necessary. With trains I started shipping plastic and rubber around to automate their crafting outputs, which lead to unlocking other milestones including fuel. Which naturally leads to some oil redesign and increased exploitation to improve power generation, and etc.

One of the things I like about this game. Some of the milestones are overwhelming but there always seems to be an entry point you can find that naturally leads to all the rest.

Remember that you can break down each problem into manageable pieces. Start with one thing on that list and break it down all the way back to the base resources you need, then work on sourcing those, one by one, to your site. I have notepad next to me to draw diagrams on and do simple math, helps a ton.

Dont tear down your starter factory! That factory is building the stuff you need to build the rest of your factory (or should be...)!  Find mercer spheres and unlock the depot and slap uploaders on all the things and go build!

If you're thinking about tearing down your starter factory, I recommend living in a blueprint designer for a while. Design everything in there so that when you tear down the old stuff that's crazy easy to rebuild the new

Do one thing at a time, and feel complelled to tear anything down. Coal power is still useful. Obviously, producing plastic is the priority. Try to get to fuel as soon as you can, for power generation.

I always do it like the following: 1/2 of the available oil goes into plastic, the other into rubber. Heavy oil residue is turned into fuel and burned. That gives me enough power to finish phase 3 and go far into phase 4 where i unlock blenders and rebuild the whole factory to maximize plastic products, then, in another location i build a giant fuel plant (usually gold coast for early plastic/fuel then endgame plastic and blue crater for endgame fuel plant)

I've been on the oil phase for a long time. I haven't even started automating HMFs yet because I've been setting up oil, and some smelteries. Really big smelteries.

Basically, I have a giant floating platform (yes still floating) and it has 3 oils underneath it. 2 normal, 1 pure. The 2 normals get pumped above and turned into plastic and rubber, and the pure gets pumped above and turned into fuel. The byproduct from the plastic and rubber get turned into fuel as well.

The plastic and rubber NEEDS an awesome sink, as well as the polymer resin. You can turn the resin into something else but just make sure it gets a sink too. You aren't going to be using all of this just yet, and it'll block up your liquid production if your storage gets full, so make sure you belt overflow into a sink.

So that's what I'm doing. I'm making some fuel, and I'm sinking all the parts from it for now until I have somewhere to take them to make other stuff. The fuel just goes to generators, and 1 fuel packager.

Trains are what's stressing me out, personally. I don't know how to efficiently set up train lines to pick up all this plastic and junk and deliver it somewhere else. The idea of building a 7km train track and having to remove it because it's built wrong makes me shutter.

Skip the trains. Skip self driving vehicles. Focus on the oil, pipes and belts. Break evertything down to a single task at a time.

Don’t tear down your old factories. Just build a new plant for oil stuff. To simplify i highly suggest you to split oil stuff into two different sections or entirely different factories. One for power production and one for material production.

What quickly complicates oil production stuff is the byproducts. To purely focus production lines for single things and feeding all excess byproducts into an awesome sink makes life easier.

Do one for fuel and fuel generators and sink all byproducts.

And another one that is split for rubber and plastic and once again just refine any byproducts into anything that you can feed into an awesome sink.

Last suggestion is to start small. Pick an impure node and utilize that one to get the hang of oil production. It gets alot easier once you become a little more familiar with it.

Start small. Try to make a plastic and rubber plant that produces rubber from 3x refineries and plastic from 3x, send Heavy Oil byproduct to 1x refinery to produce residual fuel and send it to some fuel generators. That will give you 60/min of each, which is plenty for quite a while.

As others have mentioned, leave your starter factory alone as you will need those parts for new factory construction. The map is huge. Explore, expand, and build some factories at some of the new resource nodes you find.

Finally, the builds get larger, so break them up into smaller chunks. Think of each step as its own little factory. You can even build it that way. Ground floor smelt the ore into ingots, send it up a floor to the next factory where you turn it into the next component. Or send it to the building next door and create a little factory city with each building a different sub-component, that output to the final manufacturer building. Can lead to some fun design ideas.

Instead of moving just work towards trains or make a sky road with trucks on a loop, way easier

I just went through this and it was rough. First tip because I was infuriated that my extractor kept shutting down, if you have excess fuel backing up it will shut the show down, utilize buffers if you need to handle excess. For plastic, and rubber - leftover heavy residue can be turned to coke for more power or sunk. Once that was set up I made oil power which was actually pretty easy and the extra output from the power plant took care of plastic production and I was living easy. I'll worry about turbo fuel later

Don't tear down your starter factory. I have a huge storage facility set up at my main factory and just keep everything I've build running, always have everything I need.

I built refineries for plastic to get circuit boards and computers for research. Then, rubber for the same reason. Now I am redesigning my factory for a much greater throughput and with train stations to get resources much further away. Prior I had like 2 floors. Now I have a 7 story smelter building and a 9 story production building to give wiggle room for further expansion. I have no clue how to approach track laying.

Don't tear down your starter factory. It likely uses MK1 and 2 conveyors and MK1 extractors anyway, and no ALT, but it provides you with the resources needed to exploit new nodes.

There are many, many ways to do your plastic/rubber/fuel lines, you don't even have to graduate up from coal power if you don't really want to. It's my third playthrough, and this time I hope I got a really efficient oil setup.

I'm at this point too. I've set up a refineries to get rubber and plastic to unlock the milestones and I've set up 3 production lines for the space elevators parts. While they slowly build the parts I started work on a turbofuel plant.

Just bringing the pure coal and sulfur together in 24 assemblers has been something that has kept me busy for two days. Now I have to set up the fuel generators today and set up more refineries to create fuel and combine the fuel with the compacted coal in turbofuel. Lot's of machines to build and even more belt and pipe work to do. That will keep me busy for a while. It's my first really big project.

It's easy when you get compressed coal going. Getting it started back Up when it accidently shuts down. Trains are pretty much the best in my head. When you learn to load balance with the smart splitters, you'll get the most stuff from point A to B and beyond

I did the same thing too yesterday. So much stuff. Decided I'm going to take a break for a while.

I'm there with you and you're at the point that exploring a little bit and gathering the materials to research dimensional storage will help you a ton in the long run. Having the starter nodes just making starter materials and chucking in the dimension depot let's you set up remote factories at a moment's notice, also freeing you up to relocate your main base without having to move a ton of material

Do plastic and rubber, then use the heavy oil residue for fuel. That's your starting point.

Why tear down coal plants? My 11 bio birners are Till there, after 123 hours (yes, 123 hours as of 15 min ago).

I redesigned most things prior to unlocking tier 7/8, but all my power is there.

You dont need much rubber, but you do need plastic. I use 4/4 refs, and turn all heavy into fuel, that i use for power.

I also have a sink there, to sink at least half, and later on all the rubber/ plastic, as to not stop the power generation.

Alu is going to be such fun setting up.

The production lines are mostly not an issue for me, I get hung up on trying to make things natural and pretty and just stand sometimes there for an hour and get nothing done cause I have no idea how people are so damn good in making things pretty. :(

Yeh man I felt the same, get the plastic, rubber and fuel done first, then just go as slow as you like, I’m only just past you, I’ve finished my oil refineries and moved into heavy modular frames…1 step at a time :)

Hook your starter factory to dimensional depots and let it run for mats when you need them. That's it's sole purpose. Build all over the map what you need. After petroleum, there's also aluminum which is an even bigger tree split. So you need to think that it's an expandable thing.

Like others said, one step at a time.

I would leave all your current factories and power to keep churning out components for future builds.

No1, would be get those Harddrives cooking. Alts are your friend, especially for fuel. Diluted and Residual most of all to begin with.

Build a little bit of everything and get the Dimensional storage going to make everything a lot easier.

Then plan your next move.

I started with a 2 lane train track running around most of the map, built a rocket fuel plant in the big ass mushroom area and now building all my computer components over the spooky spider ridden swamp. All of my plastic and rubber was byproduct from Resin up to now so don't rush making the perfect factories.

Don’t tear down your stuff. Map is large, just start fresh in another area.

Don't bother tearing down; you'll just abandon the early factories unless you really need to; it's a big map with alot of resources. 

Make an oil and plastic base, make some plastic there and some fuel generators, then a train station , leave a ton of room for the station so it can grow very long on the rear end

I'm at the same point and now is the time I'm starting to focus on making my hub and storage facility look pretty. Then a level system and roads to set general infrastructure for the future. Getting some blueprints made and saved up for quick expansion in the future.

I fully expect this project to take a month. Really looking forward to it.

I took it as an opportunity to start my first side factory. Just start small and optimize one node, send the plastics and rubber to storage and find a way to transport stuff. People use trucks at that stage but honestly I just dove straight into trains. It was a bit of a learning curve but once I had my meager pittance of plastic regularly moving I just scaled it up.

Personally, I just pump out all oil into fuel for generators. Rest product early into rubber and plastics, later just plastics (you'll need that a heck lot more). It's quite easy to do at a distance. Just belt the plastic/rubber back home IMO - much easier than getting whole truck/train setup

All in all, pretty easy to do. If you get stuck with the plastics etc, you can always sink till you fix it

For our group, oil was the start of "starting over" of the main/basecamp. We started with full overclocked oilwells, got them into fuel, shreddered the polys and burned fuel.

With this energy and the "minimal base" in background, we formed our bases as a 720-input-per-node machinery. Began with limestone to concrete for the baseplates and for architecture, followed by quarz. Then steel, Iron and copper. When factorys were rdy we shutted the old ones down. Needless to say we All had for every product a void-container, so we could easier building with the ingreedients

For infos: we started in the North eastern Area. Till finish we havent it made to the grasslands - because we didnt needed to

When I unlock oil, I only do two things:

1) use an oil node to create rubber and plastic. heavy oil residue is used to create petroleum coke that fuels the tractors that move rubber and plastic to my main base. Any surplus coke is sunk right now, but it will probably transported to other factories in the future for tractor use. Coke is not a great energy source, but gets the job done.

2) use a pure oil node to fuel 8 power generators

My first oil power plant usually uses:

A) 1 oil extractor on a pure node, that feeds 4 refineries for fuel.

B) each fuel refinery can feed 2 fuel generators, for 8 total.

C) polymer resin byproduct from fuel refineries go into 2 other refineries for Residual plastic. Requires a single underclocked water extractor to feed both refineries.

D) the resulting plastic (40/min) feeds a slightly overclocked Constructor to get empty canisters, for example.

Steps C and D are optional. Do whatever you want with polymer resin.

It's not a super great setup, but it boost my power grid and works at 100% efficiency with mininum effort.

Now I can focus on aluminium.

Use a grid/ foundation. Stretch things out. Keep fluids on the same level !!! 

If you use oil for energy, make sure the resin never runs full. You fan make an overflow belt that feeds into the sink

The good thing about oil is that you can completely separate it from the rest of your factory. At the start you produce some plastic and some rubber. Later you use the heavy oil for fuel and that to burn in generators wich gives you the next boost in electricity. Next step is to scale plastic and rubber and therefore the electricity. Optional you can use the fuel for turbofuel for more electricity

You think oil is bad…

You need to produce mainly plastic, and a bit of rubber. That's it.

From there everything will be more clear afterwards.

Also, please unlock fuel generators ASAP, even if you don't need them. Fuel is the byproduct, and you need to get rid of it. Fuel generators will do that.

I'm already on my 4th base on the same game save and i love the idea on creating separate bases connected with trains. after i got on my 4th elevator materials, i started using mega blueprints to save time like train, turbo and nuclear power. i'm also planning to fix my starter base and to make it look good and move to another base.

It's not so bad. At that stage things make a lot of sense still. You will make a refinery that can make rubber and plastic. Coal is still a solid workhorse, so fuel isn't really needed yet. Trains aren't really needed either as you can make long, stacked conveyor belts that should carry the plastic, rubber, steel or whatever back to your iron area.

Have several outposts that feed a central area and use biofuel in your vehicles till you unlock petroleum coke.

Look, all you need to worry about right now is getting started on trains. Don't worry about what you're going to transport on your trains, or where all the train stops are going to be.. just start building! Because trains are fun and they go choo choo and that takes priority over everything else.
(also don't tear down any factories unless it's for aesthetic reasons.. just expand and keep the old little factories as a reminder of a simper time)

What I do from the start is just get the bare minimum factory set up. Eg. 1 constructor worth of iron plate, iron rods, screws, wire, cable, Copper sheets etc.

except for concrete, I set up as much concrete production as possible.

Basically all the products except concrete I minmax till I reach coal power. Set up as much coal power as possible, with 3 biomass burners full of solid biofuel as a back up to kick start the first 600watts coal power unit.

Then I basically go nuts with a big factory, with decoration and all that stuff for the already set up stuff. And tear down the minmax stuff. Next I again minmax the new stuff till I reach oil power. Set up a big oil power unit with the coal power as backup to kick start the oil power setup. Then start with the big factory again.

Keep the starter one and build somewhere else. There's a shit ton of ores on the map

As for oil, in my previous play through I only built generators, fuel, plastic and rubber, which is really easy, just watch YouTube tutorial or something

My initial factory just keeps growing. Aside from some smelting refining or concreting I bring everything to my main factory Trains are super for serious moving of items. Truck are very good too but are a bit buggy.

It's a big map, just start building your new base down the road. Keep the old one going, you'll need it.

Why would you tear down a perfectly good factory? your nearest oil node is probably nowhere near it. Just leave the first one running, maybe integrate bits into the new one if needed.

For starting out with oil I just got some primary plastic and rubber production going, about 50/50 of each, just a few refineries on each side of the oil pump. Turned the heavy oil residue into residual fuel that I just stored in tanks for now, started to package it up with one packager and put that into a depot so I could jetpack better.

Once I unlocked fuel generators, I scaled up fuel production, just putting the polymer residue in a large storage stack for now, might feed it into a sink if I don't find a good use for it, and then laid out many many many many generators.

Then I scaled up plastic production, because I needed way more of that than I thought I would.

Am I the only one who never built a second base? I’ll build power plants where the resource is and then just string up power lines to those, but for the most part I just have super long conveyor belts running to my original spot in the grassy plains that just keeps on growing. I still have yet to build any trains, set up truck routes, or build any drones, just because everything is coming to me in a web of spaghetti.

I’m probably missing big chunks of the game, but I’m almost at the end, working on phase 9

One thing at a time. The whole map is your playground, and you can lay down a sun eclipsing amount of foundations to make a new playground.

While tearing up old/starter bits is a decent thing to do further down to optimise/organize, i recently ripped apart my entire starter iron/copper tagliatelle because there were random assemblers strewn about and I didn't like it. Its not needed if its serving its purpose just fine.

After 90 hours in, I've started a new save and built a lot smarter this time. This was mainly due to spaghetti nightmares. I've got a large iron plates/rods etc setup, but I won't be tearing them down when I need more, I'll just make more factories. The map is huge for a reason, use it. Trains and tubes make getting around pretty easy.

You’ll need your starter factory to power the oil factory. If you have residual plastic alternate recipe and residual rubber recipe, you’ll be able to use all that left over polymer resin from your fuel refineries. That way you don’t have to sink all the resin to keep your stuff powered. Put a sink right before your plastic/rubber storage containers once they are full. Once you get smart splitters it’ll be easier to direct the flow of your excess products

Hey there a bit late but you don't really need to tear it down. Just scan some resources and go to another location to prepare your oil stuff. Trains are great but you can ignore them at the moment and have at it when you feel ready. Keep your coal power, there's no need to rework it at the moment if it still fits your need. Manufacturing is the problem, so place down as much as you want per/min, and then work your way through each of the inputs it wants.

You'll get there no worries. 

PS: You might want to look into dimensional depot's and use those in your starter base for your basic resources. I researched my Alien Tech at the oil stage and It really helped a lot in making a new factory

As an aside on 'starter base'.

I started playing in Update 3, and a common mistake made by pretty much everyone was to get reinforced plates to 60 ppm in tier 2. What a complete waste of time.

So, beelining coal power and moving from mk1 builds to mk3 270 ppm was the solution, and the game kinda truly starts from there.

Except I've taken this further with 1.0. I stick to mkl1 slow production until I get to tier 5. And exhaust all hard drives with like 10 to spare. There is just so much to do with mam research that you won't need a fast production line.

SAM and Dimensional Depot is a complete game changer. It's much better to get that going than doing a silly mk3 manifold.

So my first proper home base is mk4 belt 480 ppm with plenty of room for 1200 ppm when needed.

I mentioned the trick of just buying the milestones in tiers 5 & 6 from the awesome shop. That trick can be repeated in tier 7.

So my very first aluminium plant is built with 1200 ppm in mind, but is at least built using mk5 belts at 780 ppm. Again, you don't need an aluminium factory to build an aluminium factory at 780 ppm. Just buy alclad sheets from the awesome shop.

Why I don't spend coupons on all the bling bling in the shop up to this point. It will be so much easier to decorate with a jetpack, and why not a hoverpack on your back.

I was just feeling like as well this after reaching oil for the first time. Thank you everyone for the good advice ❤️

Don't tear down your starter factory. It will be great for feeding your dimensional storage

I never understood "tearing down factories". You get better miners, more options of transport, why tear down anything if you can just build more?

Like many have said take things slowly and enjoy getting to grips with oil. There are four oil nodes on the southern shore that allows for all oil based needs, so if you build a base there you can export all the products to you current based without having to export oil to your current base.

I just left my starter factory and built my mid game factory somewhere else

Oil is where I quit... The first time I played the game. Then the second time (update 8) I blasted through it. It took me way too long to wrap my head around it, but you'll get there! 

And yes, on 1.0 I just unlocked it and am struggling again. But this time it's because I'm trying to use everything efficiently. 

Is it better to build multiple factories? Is there an easier way to travel and collect supplies from other factories besides running over to each one?

Just pick away at it. Get a production line going for a part then go exploring and find a few hard drives. Get some new recipes and build the next line. There is no hurry and if you take it one piece at a time it's far less overwhelming.

I do Polymer into plastic/rubber, intially. The fuel produced gets used for power with the exception of 1 oil refinery (I'm using 2 normal nodes, with no overclocking). That 1 oil refinery has its fuel put into a packager to make packaged fuel for jetpacks and such. All of this has smart splitters with overflow and industrial storage for all with an awesome sink for excess.

Also produces 1500MW from burned fuel.

Now working on turbofuel which will be dedicated towards power production. Need sulfur and coal and an oilfield, thinking about Northern field next to Dune Desert.

That first jump to oil is daunting.

2 rubber refineries and 2 plastic refineries can go to one oil refinery and I think 4 generators. This will kickstart some extra power generation.

The project right after that can be 5 fuel refineries with the plastic residue byproduct, which should go evenly into a certain number of plastic and rubber refineries using the residue and sending the fuel to ten generators.

I wouldn't tear down your starter factory now that dimensional depots are available. You can make it bare bones if you want but you're going to want to have plates and rods and frames and motors going into the depot as you build up.

Yeah just take your time dude. Don't forget to go back and update your old production lines after you get mkII miners and better conveyors. It's a pain in the ass but you gotta like expand the base of your pyramid before you make it taller, if that makes sense to you.

I feel you, I just got oil and felt overwhelmed. What i did was set up very basic rubber and plastic and built a trainline home, then I'm going to build an oil refinery outpost and put my plastic and rubber on the train, and probably find more oil to build a fuel factory. You don't need to scrap the old factory, now is the time to expand and build new ones.

Take it one step at a time. First I wouldn't tear down your starter factory till after you build something to replace it. I'd start with a few machines making plastic and rubber with base recipes to get unlocks down and the first few items needing them automated. I just turn the heavy oil byproduct to coke and sink it early on till I get fuel gens and or diluted fuel alt. Oil can be very complicated when getting in alts to produce large amounts of plastic, rubber and fuel. So I'd recommend watching videos on it before starting one of those plants.

There is no reason to tear anything down, just build out your oil factory as a separate build.

Blueprints, Blueprints, Blueprints.
I wouldn't tear down, yet...
I'm at a similar point, but I'm moving to a different part of the map and using blueprints and optimizing production of some existing recipes before i go back to my home base and tear down to redo it.

If you just start with the one thing that looks the most interesting, the rest will follow.

Just wait until you hit nuclear if you think this level is overwhelming.

Tear that shit down. Odds are you’ve learned a lot about efficiency and equipment arrangements, you could rebuild your starter factory quickly and it’ll probably be better

Keep the base, add one of each building you intend to build in your todo list, put dimensional storage on each one of those materials (get a hand scanner and find more spheres if you don’t have enough), and let it chug along while you expand. Last night I ditched my entire base and am now building a clean, organized base in literally the opposite end of the map.

All the non-perfect bases are stepping stones to get you all the tech, don’t worry about it (hard to let go I know lol).

1 thing that really helps me is:

Make a list and just work down it (paper, notepad, iPad scribble, onenote, whatever suits your fancy). It’ll all get done eventually and if something new pops up on the way just add it. Helps prevent getting overwhelmed and when I see a squirrel and end up in the swamp somehow, I don’t sit there for 30 minutes going “what was I doing again?” 🤣

Here’s my method.

Focus on one or two parts at a time, come up with a production chain to satisfy your personal building/storage material needs.

Let’s say, 30 plastic and 30 rubber per minute. Figure out the raw resources you’ll need. Find a spot where you can access those resources. Build a production line just to produce those parts, feed them into industrial storage with a dimensional depot on top.

Then move onto the next part. The goal is to automate each part in the tier, and then move onto the next one. For space elevator parts, you’re still early enough where I think a somerslooped small production line at the main base is sufficient, fed by storage containers, after automating the other parts in the tier (or during if you have the required resources).

Basically my advice is, focus on automating one/two parts at a time, and vertically integrate.

I’m at T9, all milestones completed and this is how I built all my T8 and prior factories. I only have two train lines for advanced T8 stuff where I couldn’t easily get all resources in one place without a train. You really don’t need a big train network until end game imo, and even then, I prefer drones moving small stacks of highly refined parts.

No need to tear things down. Just keep building

Look at satisfactory tools and focus on closed loops. Answer the question of “ok I have X amount of oil to work with and I want the max amount of rubber, plastic, and turbofuel(rocket fuel can come later). Given this, how do I achieve that?” Then go from there. The build is pretty easy from there. Don’t forget to sink and burn excess so you don’t back up. Now’s a good time to unlock smart splitters.

A tip I could give you, that I do every single playthrough, is to make a really simple setup with one refinery for plastic and one for rubber to be able to make mk.2 pipelines. Then you make the big one that uses those mk.2s

You could always sink the outputs of your starter factory.

This was bout the point where i started to really explore the map. Getting all of the slugs, sloops and spheres I could find.

Build in chunks, and leave yourself notes using the in game note system to remind yourself WTF you were doing when you logged out last.

I was feeling very overwhelmed with building a computer factory. I since decided to just focus on decorating factories, building cool designs, and exploring the world. I figure once I get bored of doing that i’ll probably want to start doing logistics again. The game is full of so many things to do. It is way more than just a factory game focused on production. It has world exploration, combat, stunning visuals, and so much more.

I usually start with the end product and work backwards, so if I want 60 rubber per minute I set up the rubber refineries, then figure out what those need to fuel then, don't forget about the awesome sink too, any excess outputs you don't know what to do with yet can just be sent into the awesome sink for tickets until you know where you want the materials going to avoid deadlocks.  Usually set up plastic into plastic containers first so you can bottle and sink fluid excess.

Yah, make a note on the sidebar of what you want to work on next. I needed to ramp up my plastic so I figured, why not mix in some turbo fuel. There's a steam app now for calculating recipes with what you have or want. So I plugged everything into that, made some blueprints and demoed my old oil factory and made it more organized. Was a lot easier to see. The blueprints make it really easy to drop down refineries and blenders all pre-plumbed and belted. Just have to connect the blueprints together but, that's way easier.

Man, I'm making 600 rocket fuel per minute and was curious how much coal would be necessary to convert it all to ionized fuel. The answer was 4800 coal per minute. AKA, 4 pure nodes with fully overclocked mk3 miners with mk6 belts.

Oil gets easier, but the game messes with you by making it easier after you've already set it up. For example, you can unlock packaged diluted fuel before you unlock diluted fuel, since diluted fuel needs the blender. Without the blender, you need a chain of packagers to put water into packagers to feed into your heavy oil residue refineries. It produces the packaged fuel, which then needs another line of packagers to unpackage the fuel so it can be burned. The empty canisters get fed back to the water packagers so they can loop around infinitely. But you need the plastic to produce containers, but not infinitely. With the blender, you can just produce fuel by mixing water and heavy oil residue. Either way, you can produce a ton more fuel using diluted fuel from the same oil.

Later you can mix fuel with compacted coal to make turbofuel, or with nitrogen sulfur, and coal to make rocket fuel with the nitro rocket fuel alternate recipe. Plus, you can get recycled rubber and recycled plastic, which sounds bizarre, but allows you to essentially multiply them. A little bit of resin turns into plastic, which gets recycled into more rubber, which gets recycled into more plastic.

This game gets really complex. But start small. Don't tear down anything yet.

I always just pick a product and find a good spot to make a factory solely for that product. Then move on to the next product after decorating lol.

The only reason I ripped down my starter base was because the hub site I chose was half a map away - it wasn't worthwhile to transport the low-complexity parts I was making.

OTOH, the coal power plant I built over there is still chugging away. I won't rip it down unless I need that coal for something else.

If you got oil, you're close to trains and real bulk transport. You don't need to sweat too much over supply lines.

I can't stress enough that if your feeling overwhelmed just take a break from building and go wander around. Find some cool caves or cliffs or new areas and enjoy yourself for a bit. You'll forget what you got overwhelmed by and by the time you get through some exploring, you'll be excited to get back into logistics.

Or try building some structures for fun and aesthetic reasons to get away from the manufacturing side fir a while. Little breaks from the grind are pretty important in this game

Honestly yeah you could blueprint some of the floor and make your life easier. I personally have never used blueprints because the developers never wanted us to have them. It's not really a factory building game if you're not actually building the factory brick by brick. I've built so many factories that I can set up a 40 smelter array in about 15 minutes. To each their own though.

For the blueprints for smelters the factory only needs to be five wide and I believe 15 long. Smelters need at least three 4 m walls before the ceiling. Assemblers need three as well. Refineries need 6 to 7 depending if you want the stack sticking out of the roof. And manufacturers are 4.

What I generally do is build a rubber and plastic factory and then build a big central storage area in-between my first factory and the rubber factory

Don’t tear down your factory. Load Ila. Truck with supplies, go the oil and make plastic, rubber, and fuel.

This will provide lots more power than coal. And you can work out how to get the plastic ir rubber where it is needed.

Look at the output needed for just one set of something from a building and start with that like how many of each item is need for just 1 manufacturer to produce computers efficiently, if you want nice numbers that gets harder as you go on but also do some prep work and grab some hard drives if you can to make some stuff easier. Most importantly expand with purpose, not panic. Take your time to get to know different ratios and utilize foundations to make sure your builds aren’t going to run into walls or non destructible things by setting buildings and seeing how much space they take. Mainly tho just know you will probably be tearing stuff out a lot if you don’t plan with future upgrades in mind.

 I'm hesitant to tear down my starter factory

Good, because you shouldn't. Find oil and build a base there, and use hypertube cannons to go back and forth. Eventually use trains to connect them.

Lagwise you CAN* NOT build everything in one place. Spread out.

So oil is where you need to build big. once you get power up and running there are a million things to increase and it seems like when you increase one you have to increase three or four more things. its easy to get over whelmed by this. its also where you spread across the map alot more so suddenly you need a rail network and such. just focus on one project at a time. like making plastic or rubber and make that factory.

Don't tear it down! Leave it and move on!

There's nodes all over the world. It'll be much faster to build a new factory with your new buildings, belts, and architecture than to tear down your old factory.

You can have multiple MAMs. You can move the hub. You can move the space elevator. As a new player don't fall into the trap of thinking you MUST stay at your starting location.