First-factory economics: the numbers to know before you place a belt

Every jammed factory shares one history: the player placed machines because they looked tidy, not because of numbers. The four numbers below change how your first factory gets built.

Number one: miner rate. One iron miner produces 30 items per minute at basic level. Every downstream decision starts from this number - if your build needs 60, you need two miners, not 'add later'.

Number two: furnace ratio. One furnace consumes 15 ore per minute and yields 15 plates. Two miners means four furnaces, not three. A single mismatched ratio creates queues that slow everything.

Number three: belt capacity. A yellow belt moves 15 items per second - twice one miner's need and less than two. Counting belt capacity before building parallel lines is the habit that separates growing factories from tangled ones.

Number four: power headroom. Build 1.3 times your electricity need, not 1.0. Pollution-driven mining slowdowns and sudden outages always arrive at the worst moment, and a thirty percent margin turns that event into a small problem.

With these four numbers your first factory will not be perfect - but it will grow. And a growing factory is the only kind that is fun to fix.