New to game, need help

[hearty kraken]

1. Press Alt

To automate something:

• check what ingredients you need to see if you have it already in your factory. If you don't, then consider automating that first. (optional step; you can very easily build 2 or more things at the same time, and with certain items like copper wire it's actually better to skip this step because you never want to automate just copper wire)
• Pick the spot you want to build the thing (closeish to where you have the ressources ideally).
• Build belts corresponding to the ingredients used for the build, and for the product. For example, if you want to make red science, which needs gears and copper plate, you might plan out 1 belt with gears/copper plate on it, and another belt for the red science produced, for a total of 2 belts.
• Build a bunch of assembling machines and inserters connected to the belts appropriately
• Make belts connecting the ingredient to the belts you just made appropriately. For example, for red science, you would have a belt going from your main copper belt to your new factory and a belt going from your main gear belt to your new factory, which combine to make the gear/copper plate belt required.
• You should now have red science being produced onto the belt you had preplanned for red science. Check this is the case or if you made a mistake somewhere. (and if you have made a mistake, fix it)

Do not bother making the output belts into loops, it serves no purpose.

[queen cobalt]

For the Science Labs - you can place inserters between them, to make them share resources. That way you only need to bring red science to the first one, and it will get distributed down the chain

[upbeat locust]

There is

[upbeat locust]

Thanks, will try

[upbeat locust]

@hearty kraken i manage to make this after a long hour, thanks for your help

learning how to make the thing that lets each material take half of the belt is a huge game changer for me

[queen cobalt]

Yeah, belts have 2 sides
Inserters place items on the far side
Conveyors and Miners place it on the close side, if connected from the side

That was a really interesting feature to me, compared to Mindustry

And also splitters, that can act as:

1. Routers(split/merge)
2. Underflow/Overflow gates
3. Sorters(filters)

[upbeat locust]

kinda confused as to why inserters dont use both side of the belt though

but atleast it makes for some interesting builds

[dull brook]

They can pick up from either side, but will only place one side

[queen cobalt]

Inserters only placing on one side of the belt is intentional, because it allows to use single belt for 2 different resources, without risk of inserters messing it up
In fact, nothing can mess up 2 lanes of the belt, other than connecting it to the side of straight belt(belt will be straight, if it has at least 2 inputs)