Replace the tutorial on building Mining Platforms | Shapez 2 | Page 1

pale harness May 21, 2026, 3:04 AM

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-# This is a cross-post from the external suggestions board: https://shapez-2.nolt.io/5211

While I was pleasantly surprised by the helpful hands-on approach of the new built-in tutorial introduced in the 1.0 release, it turns out that one particular piece of advice that the tutorial is giving all new players is actually materially degrading the performance of their factories.

The tutorial is responsible for almost all instances of players encountering bug SPZ2-5679 "Gaps in shape production happen sometimes when switching between simulation and normal for asteroid miners."

The best explanation I've yet found for why this happens (and how to avoid it) comes from @signal creek right here [on Discord](#1497342698255024298 message):

Merging immediately after a mini-miner is reported to cause this...

(similarly, splitting a belt in the first square after it enters a platform will sometimes leave gaps)

Testing has shown that if you allow the mined shapes to travel out straight from the mini-miners for some distance before you merge the belts together, this bug completely dries up. Sure enough, I replaced all of my mining platforms with the design shown in the second screenshot attached to this post, and as a result, I am no longer encountering this bug in my save.

While I do hope that SPZ2-5679 will one day receive a proper fix, we have the opportunity to implement a very quick workaround which will drastically reduce the number of new players who encounter this bug: change the tutorial.

I hereby officially suggest that the tutorial be changed so that it does not recommend the design shown in the first screenshot attached here, but rather, it should recommend something much more similar to the design shown in the second screenshot attached here.

dire dawn May 21, 2026, 3:07 AM

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that second image doesn't actually avoid the bug, it's a tad more robust than the first, but has the same problems

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a proper version is one that merges the belts in a balanced way, with a couple belts between the mini-miners and the first mergers

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pale harness May 21, 2026, 3:10 AM

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Are you sure? I've been testing it for a few weeks. I replaced all existing mining platforms with the design shown in my second screenshot, and I also replaced my standard Mining Platform blueprint with the same. Since that time, across zooming in and zooming out, leaving the game idle, playing the game actively, and many days of closing the game and reopening it, no gaps in production have appeared across any of my factories.

dire dawn May 21, 2026, 3:10 AM

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i would honestly say the way it currently does it is best. yeah, it still has the bug, but anyone new to shapez 2 but not new to the factory genre is just going to go "pff that's stupid, you can save belts"

dire dawn May 21, 2026, 3:10 AM

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pale harness Are you sure? I've been testing it for a few weeks. I replaced all existing mini...

according to avernar's original testing, it still has the issues

pale harness May 21, 2026, 3:11 AM

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I don't care about that, I'm saying you go test my design.

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While I have seen [this design](#1506855250274029568 message) recommended in several places on this server, I think the balanced merging, while sensible, is actually overkill, and is in truth unrelated to the bug.

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I hypothesize that the unbalanced merging was never the enemy. I contend that the culprit was solely "merging immediately after a mini-miner." That's why I tried out the design I posted above instead of the one you propose.

sweet meteor May 21, 2026, 7:36 AM

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Why would the devs change the tutorial instead of fixing the bug?

sudden tree May 21, 2026, 7:52 AM

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because the bug is complex and can't be fixed easily

sweet meteor May 21, 2026, 8:14 AM

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If using longer belts hides the bug in the ways the OP says, then the devs could just as easily implement a similar bug hiding mechanism by giving miners a bigger internal buffer. Changing the tutorial doesn't make sense as a solution to me.

pale harness May 21, 2026, 12:00 PM

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@sweet meteor Changing the tutorial is not a solution to the bug, but rather, it's an acceptable and easy-to-implement workaround.

How things are right now:

All new players who complete the tutorial are taught the wrong design. They all then suffer from degraded mining platform throughput with time, as gaps appear. The players either don't notice and suffer from slower quota achievement times, or they do notice and have to read about SPZ2-5679 to learn how to work around it.

How I would like things to be:

All new players who complete the tutorial are taught a design that works around this bug, unbeknownst to them. Most players who complete the tutorial are likely to assume the tutorial-sanctioned design is "developer recommended," and so are unlikely to deviate from this design unless they encounter weird gaps in production, which they shouldn't with this new design. This allows new players to keep playing with full-throughput miners without even knowing of this bug, giving the devs however much time they need to actually fix the bug while newcomers to the game remain blissfully unaware of it.

vague fable May 21, 2026, 2:27 PM

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I'm a fairly new player to Shapez 2 (never played Shapez 1) and I have to agree with @pale harness on this. The tutorial taught me Image 1 for laying out my miners, so naturally that's how all my miners are setup. I noticed issue with throughput, but naturally assumed it was my factories that were the bottleneck, never occurred to me it would be my miners. The pattern in Image 2 is easy to understand, and if it helps alleviate an issue should be the one in the tutorial.

acoustic salmon May 21, 2026, 2:35 PM

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aaah that's why I'm having dips in my stats? great

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I've been making my miners like that since the start too....

pale harness May 21, 2026, 2:52 PM

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@vague fable @acoustic salmon Thanks for your comments. Glad to know I'm not the only one sincerely frustrated by the deceptively unwise design in the tutorial.

acoustic salmon May 21, 2026, 2:54 PM

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well, I don't know if changing the layout fixes my factory throughput... still have to test

pale harness May 21, 2026, 2:55 PM

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Yeah, please do test it. I'm still grateful for your earlier comment anyway, because it bolsters my theory that a significant portion of players are unlikely to deviate from the Mining Platform design shown in the tutorial, which is why it's so important that the tutorial recommend an actually good design.

acoustic salmon May 21, 2026, 2:58 PM

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should've added to my comment that I don't know if it's really because of the tutorial... it just saves building count tbh...
(started playing in august last year and I really don't remember what the tutorial looked like back then)

signal creek May 21, 2026, 5:01 PM

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The tutorial has been the same for a very long time.

acoustic salmon May 25, 2026, 8:19 AM

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pale harness Yeah, please do test it. I'm still grateful for your earlier comment anyway, bec...

I tested it with the layout @dire dawn sent, but I still get the same throughput... so I guess it's not that. Don't know what it could be though

floral wyvern May 28, 2026, 3:06 AM

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pale harness <@502012553161998336> Changing the tutorial is not a solution to the bug, but ra...

Is THAT where these fckn gaps are coming from?

#Replace the tutorial on building Mining Platforms