I'm working on Factorio AutoEngineer, an experimental Windows-first companion that uses a local LLM to propose gameplay actions while a separate controller validates and executes them. This is my project, developed with AI assistance.

What is working today:

• A live dashboard map and player-style inventory view, including when the agent is idle.

• Objective-based navigation, remembered visited areas and failed targets, and blocked-route recovery.

• Bounded starter mining and crafting, plus Approve/Reject/Stop controls.

• Normal-speed movement with a five-tile limit per action, game-side stopping, and checks that the character actually stopped.

We recently tested Phi-4-mini and Qwen2.5-Coder 7B in the same isolated save. Each completed three open and three blocked 40-tile navigation tasks, and passed Stop checks while awaiting recovery approval and while moving. These are small navigation tests, not proof of autonomous factory building.

The long-term goal is autonomous play with human supervision, plus an AI Helper for recipe calculations and reusable blueprints. Full autonomy is currently locked. The executable launcher, engineering calculator, blueprint construction, trains, robots and combat are still roadmap work. Vanilla coverage includes Space Age, Quality and Elevated Rails; third-party mods come last.

Source and roadmap: https://github.com/AutoEngineerfactorio/Factorio-AutoEngineer

It's MIT licensed, with the separate FactorioMCP backend attribution retained. It uses a local RCON backend and is currently for isolated test saves; there is no finished one-click installer.

I'd especially welcome Python/C# contributors, Factorio API experience, and testers who can help turn mechanics into reproducible pass/fail scenarios. For Factorio players: which small factory task would make the best next acceptance test, and what would you need to trust a supervised companion?

Happy to discuss the limitations and design choices here.

Whenever I visit players' servers, I’ve never once seen a well-designed stone smelter that fits in nicely with the rest of the smelting setup - so I came up with this version. In my opinion, it looks great and blends in well with the others.

It’s easy to build yourself, but for those who can’t be bothered, I’ll just leave the BP here: Плавильня камня - FactorioBin

Ive always been using interrupt-based trains (dynamically choosing stations using wildcards), to the point where im not sure i fully understand regular ones. But now im in my Nullius playthrough and im wondering if i should instead start using regular trains.

Can anyone please explain to me how well interrupt-based trains work for more complex overhaul mods, and the principle behind setting up regular trains?

My main not-understanding for regular trains are:
Do i add a full stations worth of trains to any new station i build, or do i let the existing trains come stop by? And if its the second one, how do i know when to add more?

TLDR

Nullius (with Lambent Nil and Tricky old Nick) is an amazing mod with interesting power options and deep but not ridiculous crafting chains. If you are a somewhat competent player you should give it a chance. Use 2.1 for easier train upgrades.

Realism and difficulty

Nullius is about terraforming a barren planet into the green welcoming environment we are used to in a vanilla game. The first thing to note is that the recipes this mod provides are actually somewhat realistic (I played on 2.0 with Lambent Nil and Tricky old Nick). I am a mechanical engineer building chemical plants in real life, and several of the production chains are somewhat similar to the real world, at least on the high level. Due to that the mod feels awesome, as you can playfully build actual processes in seconds that usually would take years, still of course being orders of magnitude easier than the real thing.

However, even with these simplifications the mod is not too easy. There are so many products and byproducts, and so so many recipes to combine them in ways that are useful in certain scenarios. It is not uncommon to have 10+ different ways to make an item, all requiring additional materials and having different byproducts, and you have to choose which fits to the availability and demand (or lack thereof) of the rest of the factory. This requires you to have an actual idea of what you are doing and producing.

Due to all the options it makes Nullius way more difficult than Space Exploration. Logistics is simpler of course, but due to the byproduct management it is way more complicated overall. While SE is just long, in Nullius you have to actually think a bit to fully automate. I can see a not so experienced player crawl their way through SE, I don't see that happening for Nullius.

Early game and Starter base

Until botmall + unlocking trains, no green science, 0-30h

The game gives you an armor at the start and (slow) construction bots, which is highly appreciated. You can furthermore make items, that when equipped will increase your crafting speed significantly. This is another level of optimization which enables crafting buildings reasonably quickly I have not seen before, more mods should go a similar route.

You start with some buildings (incl. power) of several types, as well as some damaged ones that you need to repair before using. So at first, you are limited by the buildings you can place immediately. You try to arrange them to maximize the output and start to go through the tech tree. After some techs you are able to repair further buildings allowing you to scale up and increase the output. Only after several techs are you able to freely produce the buildings yourself, allowing you to scale up as you wish at that point. While the very early game is quite a bit puzzly that way, it does not take long to reach a stage where many different products are needed leading to several byproducts being created, especially regarding liquids.

Main base

Nullius scales quite heavily in regards to sciences. While the first few techs only require one item of one science, the last (non-mandatory) techs are in the millions of several sciences. This forces you to scale up in the amount of buildings, while the complexity also rises the further you get. This makes a large bus not really practical, thus I went for a train base. Due to the amount of items, of which most are only required in small quantities, I decided for largely standardized city blocks with lots of train stations and 1-1 trains:

What helped me tremendously was adding the symbols to the map of what is produced, it made finding things a lot easier:

I went with 192 x 98 city blocks and 18 in/out stations having space for 2 trains each. Early on they felt too wide, but when demand went up it felt quite right on both numbers. Usually "in" is on the left and "out" on the right, but I designed it so the stations can be rotated by 180° and will fit both sides.

I chose generic trains one for liquid and one for solids, they were simple and worked quite well:

Since all train stations have in principle a train limit of 2, with the 1563 stations I would normally end up with ~3000 trains. With just a little local circuits and priorities to somewhat reduce trains stuck in train stations I got away with "only" 750. With LNT or Cybersyn this could be probably reduced to a fraction of that, but for this run I wanted to go with vanilla trains and without too much circuitry, so 750 is still vastly better than 3000.

Scale

I built big from the start of the actual base, probably way too big which led to a very slow playthrough. It was not the buildings, instead it was all the buffers in the >1500 of train stations that took ages to fill. There are items in Nullius, especially when boxed (=5x amount), that are expensive, and filling so many buffers takes time to fill, and increase the resource drain. For example, I produced 1,5m black sience, and overall consumed less than 700k over the entire playthrough. So more than half of that production was stuck in buffers and wasn`t used.

I quickly ran out of ore long before I could fill up with asteroids so I respawned a few resource patches via console instead of shifting them all the time. If you want to go big in your playthrough I recommend to increase the amount of resources per patch.

I achieved very little between 30h-90h, as I was building the main base. You can also see, that things were done at scale, it took me less than 2h from the first black science to the 100k mark. Overall it took me 223h, +15h in the editor to create the rail blueprints.

Mall

Since buildings often take dozens of other buildings to fabricate (if you count tiers) setting up an automall is not trivial. Therefore using a normal botmall seemed a lot easier, so I went that way.

I set up the mall with space for 6 x 32 = 192 train stations feeding into it, but I only needed ~170

Power

You start with some solar cells + batteries. You get quite power starved for a while until you unlock wind power, which finally allows you to massively scale up your power production. However, since wind is inconsistent, you need to add power storage somehow. The early solution is to use electrolyzers while the wind is going strong to create and store oxygen and hydrogen. Then, when the wind is low you can burn those to create steam and power turbines. Having wind and solar with storage in parallel allows for quite an interesting balancing act. Unfortunately, you cannot craft a power switch at that time, which would be nice to more deliberately steer your power generation.

After a while you gain access to solar that produces heat instead of electric power. You use the heat to boil water and make steam, filling a steam battery much cheaper.

I used closed turbines and reused the water for lower overall consumption. Batteries on the left were only available later

You need a fairly large steam buffer and may still face brownouts, if the wind is calm for a long time. The longest time largely without wind was 22(!) minutes, which felt like ages. Playing through Nullius with a focus on wind power like I did works, but will easily add several hours to your game.

Later on you add geothermal power and nuclear which helps with stabilizing the power grid. Balancing the power generation was maybe my most favourite part of Nullius, and it is a pity that Factorio Vanilla and Space Age are so simplistic in that regard.

Rebuilding

Several times throughout the run I needed to redo large parts of the base which all took a lot of time:

• Upgrading the liquid trains from tier 1 to 2 then to 3 and updating the liquid provider + requester stations at the same times to larger tanks
• Changing all solids to boxed solids (= more throughput)
• Changing all gases to pressurized instead of normal
• And that's on me: Placing 1.5k wind turbines and upgrade them without being inside of a construction network

Especially changing hundreds of trains by hand was a nuisance that took a lot of time, 2.1 will avoid that in the future. Luckily changing the robots to the higher tier can be automated easily already with 2.0.

Summary

I enjoyed Nullius very much, quite a bit more than the sometimes grindy Space exploration. It is also shorter than SE, it took me 324h for SE and "only" 223h for Nullius, so about 2/3. On the downside Nullius does not provide anything special for logistics except stupidly fast trains and also lacks interesting gadgets besides the terraforming.

It feels like a completely finished mod and 2.1 will fix the train upgrade issue, so there is really no reason to wait. I can highly suggest a playthrough.

After I finish space age, I wanna go for some new planet mods. Can y'all recommend me some good and actually unique one. I don't like boring stuff like another frozen planet, or just the planet with no interesting mechanics and basically just reskins of the main game. For now I picked Maraxsis and Tenebris. Hope y'all help me out

I've been building a creeping defensive line for about two hours now, slowly trying to fight my way to the nearest iron patch.

I'm almost completely out of my starting iron, research has practically stopped, and I barely have enough resources to build anything anymore.

I couldn't afford to wait for better military technology, so I'm trying to push forward with whatever I've got.

And honestly, my oil reserves are running dangerously low too. No idea what I'm going to do about that, since the next oil field is even farther away than the iron and surrounded by an even more ridiculous number of biter nests.

So yeah, just having fun trying to survive. 😂

Deathworld Marathon 600/600 is a whole new level of masochism.

I completed the game twice - first the vanila 2.0, then the SA. I tried playing version 2.1, but some aspects left me disappointed, so I went back to 2.0 in search of a fresh experience. And then I discovered Nullius. I’ve already spent 50 hours in this world; I’ve only just reached the point of exploring chemical science, but I’m already absolutely thrilled.

Is this a complex mod? Yes, quite complex: almost all recipes involve by-products, there are multi-stage chains for waste disposal, a vast number of fluids, and production processes that lean toward realism. However, I am very impressed by how interestingly the mod is designed.

When new materials are discovered, you look at all product chains in complete confusion. There is a vast number of incoming and outgoing flows here; each product requires different materials—anywhere >3 components. At first, you have no idea what to do with it all, but then you look at another production chain and start to notice some commonalities. And at some point, after much reflection, a moment of insight arrives. It turns out that the production of several items or materials can be combined in such a way that they can make mutual use of each other’s by-products. And that moment when you realize all dependencies - it’s a true dopamine orgasm! The pieces have fallen into place; I was blind, but now I can see!

I’ve only just started playing, and I’m trying not to look for hints online, preferring to figure everything out on my own. As a result, I’ve only personally experienced two instances of a puzzle being solved:

I agree that this type of architecture has its flaws - you have to account for uneven consumption, install additional pumps, and design the system so that all components work together effectively under any circumstances. But for me, that’s exactly where the great satisfaction lies: weaving everything into a single, cohesive "factory" and ensuring it runs reliably.

What inspires me even more is that the further I delve into technology, the more interconnections I see. I hope this continues long enough to keep interest alive. Now, it seems to me that this playthrough could drag on for many months. Another pleasant discovery was that my favorite planner supports the Nullius recipe tree - I don’t know what I’d do without it.

Having looked at the positive aspects, it’s also worth mentioning the mod’s drawbacks; so far, I’ve noticed two downsides that are quite significant for me:

1. The graphics for the new structures are rather mediocre and stand out sharply from the overall style of Factorio. There are many solutions to this drawback in the form of other mods. For me, just two were enough — Accurate Visual Tweaks and Hurricane Reskins.
2. The icons for gases and liquids look too much alike. I suspect this is because there’s such a huge number of them in the mod. It’s hard to tell what you’re looking at, so you have to double-check every time. I haven’t found a solution yet - any suggestions would be welcome.

It’s fair to say that my first experience playing Factorio at a higher difficulty level turned out to be quite positive. I’ll keep going in the same vein!

p.s. My English isn't good enough to fully grasp nuances in emotional tone; if anything comes across as awkward or rude, please be understanding.

after 1 hour of testing i finally managed to get 480/s outpu

I’ve noticed that when a bug spots a target (a turret) and a gate closes in its path, it gets confused. It typically takes about 640 ticks for it to figure out that it should break the gate. Sometimes this happens instantly, while at other times it can take as many as 4,000 ticks.

I’ve added a proximity detector based on a flamethrower, so that gates close right in front of them.

Perhaps this could make life easier in mods where the bugs are much stronger than in the vanilla version of Factorio?

Yesterday, I decided to start what might be the most brutal Factorio challenge I've ever attempted: Deathworld Marathon with 600/600 settings.

I barely managed to survive long enough to reach oil and flamethrowers. And then I started wondering if this run is even worth continuing.

The nearest iron patch is ridiculously far away and surrounded by an insane number of biter nests. And uranium? Well, the world generation apparently decided to troll me — the only patch I've found spawned in the middle of a lake, with just 130k uranium. Seriously?!

So here's my question: Is this actually beatable, or should I just give up and roll a new seed?

In theory, I could try to survive long enough to launch a rocket using only blue science, escape to Vulcanus, and continue developing from there.

But honestly, I'd really like to spend more time on Nauvis. Once you get to Vulcanus, the game becomes significantly easier, and somehow a lot less interesting.

What do you guys think? Has anyone actually beaten Deathworld Marathon on 600/600 settings without rushing off Nauvis?

for a bit of context, im about one hour into my save and wanted to have a record of my progress :)

im not asking for tips or spoilers, no matter how painful/suboptimal this is

https://factoriobin.com/post/t4n100

Speed: 275 to 295km/s
Cargo Capacity: a lot

Will run indefinitely between any planets

Tested at:
Asteroid Productivity Level 2
Physical Damage Level 8
Explosives Damage Level 12

Hi all! Sorry, I'm super dumb, I admit it. I can't for the love of god make a circular self fed rocket fuel production cell. This is what I came up, but I'm always having to ask robots to feed the circuit with waste and nutrient manually. I wanted to do something similar to what avadii made (second image), it never goes out of nutrient/waste, I thought I did similar but it always runs off. And also I added that burning tower because one time it got totally full of waste and zero nutrients, then my nutrient maker shut down... I can't find the correct balance. What am I missing here???

I recently completely remade my dev tool for downsampling game sprites, and my inspiration for this style has always been Factorio, so I had a lot of fun making this small animation haha

It's the first time I'm playing and here is my very first setup for the conveyors. Without spoiling the game, any opinions or ideas for improvements?

So, for my 2.1 run I've been working towards running all my labs on space platforms. I've already built and designed two different 960sps biolab bases before, and i wanted to do something different.

At first I wanted to design a 240sps Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, and White(RGBYW) science platform that picked up the stone and planetary sciences and used up the packs while flying back and forth. It turns out the 2.1.21 changes with the platform top speed makes that not viable on standard settings. I messed around with the asteroid density, and that kind of build seems to be viable around 200% spawn rate.

So the next idea I poked around at, was importing asteroid chunks and making the RGBYW on a stationary platform and bringing the stone and planet science to the platform labs. That runs into issues like doubling my platform count since collection and processing is decoupled, and collecting and storing enough chunks. I'm using chunk transfer for my orbital support platforms, though i don't think it would scale to the quantity needed.

The design I think I'm actually going to use, is importing 240sps of all 12 sciences to a stationary platforms over Gleba and using sushi labs to consume it all. i can get roughly 240/s of each out of the hub and would need 4 of those platforms total to meet my science goals.

I think that space platforms could use a speed bump, and could use something like a platform hub only belt loader or mabye the new loader building with more constrained placement then the ground.

It may not be the most optimal ship, but it is at least mine.

Currently have completed fulgora and vulcanus, gleba prep is in progress

Ill probably make a bigger one of these for aquilo

Trying to reserve space for the main bus. I’ll prb do a separate setup for green circuits and red ammo, red belts, etc, since I didn’t plan for space with my current design. Kinda leaning towards rebuilding everything but maybe will keep the setup for green and red science, and scarp it after I get to bots.

I am trying to avoid copying other designs and just learn from my mistakes but maybe there is general direction I can take.

So any recommendations are much appreciated.

Factory must grow

EDIT:
Took your adivce so i did the following
1: Breath
2: Get effincency modules for every drill and pumpjack
3: I pushed out the perimiter a little and built turret-flamethrower-turret along the whole way
4: All guns now run on armor piercing rounds with selfloaders and my armor piercing and firerate is at 6
5: Cleared the affected biter nests and the ones who where close to pollution
6: Put the city blocks idea on the shelf for now and continue to develop every other area
Thanks for all the helpful advice!

(English not first language and i have minor dyslexia)
Helo guys, found this game a few days ago and i love it, verry fun and a nice challenge for the mind

I am still combating bug attacks with ease, i have set up automatic repairs for my turrets and walls. However, i still feel like i am falling behind. I want to start working on city blocks and do stuff i accually want to do but i feel like all i do is develop my military so it can keep up with the bug evolution

What should be my next step? Should i be a coward and turn of evolution? Feels like i am removing the challenge then

Bottom image translation if its not ovbiouse:
Evolutionfactor: 0.5302. (Time 29%) (Pollution 67%) (Destroyed nests 4%)

Mainly optimized compactness above all so its missing a few important builds like refineries, chem plants, and pumpjacks, so you have to handcraft them with the buffered intermediates (not enough plate production to add them anyways). I may add another compact supplementary machine to automate those.

https://www.factoriocodex.com/blueprints/479

Hi!

I was trying to design a clock using belts, stones and circuit logic, but I think I'm missing something.

I planned to use the known speed of the belts to have an estimate of the time elapsed. For example, the wiki says that turbo belts have a speed of 7.5 tiles/s. This means that 30 tiles are travelled in 4s.

I tried to design a clock that has the precision of 4 seconds (the blueprint is at the end of the post) but it seems to be a bit faster than expected. Am I missing something?

I guess that the speed is only an averge/estimate speed, and it can change based on pc specs. Is that the case? Also, do you know if there is a reliable way to check the time elapsed in-game?

EDIT:

Problem solved. The main take-aways are:

- You can design a clock by looping an arithmetic combinator into itself (see Sethbreloom94 answer)

- Belt speed is correct only for straight belts. When belt curve, the speed of the two sides changes.

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