General

Q: What is a factory building and why?
A: It's a building you can place down and build some of your factory inside. This allows you to organize your factory by task, or simply encapsulate your spaghetti. Factory buildings are also bigger on the inside, so you can also save a bit of space and make your factory more compact. If you pick up your factory building, everything inside will stay there and you can place it down somewhere else. Additionally, the entire factory interior is powered, so you do not need any power poles inside your factory building.

Q: How do I enter a factory building?
A: Simply run into the door.

Q: Why is my factory building dark and how do I make it brighter?
A: Factory buildings have no windows, and there is no sunlight inside factory buildings. You'll need to install electric lighting. You can either place some lamps manually, or you can research interior lighting, which will illuminate the entire factory floor of each of your factory buildings using hidden electric lamps. These lamps require a bit of power, so your factory building will still be dark without power.

Q: What happens when I pick up a factory building?
A: All the things inside the factory building will be preserved. You can place down the factory building somewhere else and it will continue to work.

Q: How can I label factory buildings so I can easily tell what is in them?
A: Research the external overlay display technology, and read its description. Once the research is finished, the overlay controllers should be inside the factory, to the right of the entrance. Place items inside them and you will see their icons appear on the outside of the building once you walk out.

Q: How can I see into factory buildings from the outside?
A: Research the "Factory preview" technology, and a toggle button with a factory building symbol will appear in the top left of your GUI. Whenever this button is toggled on and you hover over a factory building from outside, a preview of the interior of the factory building will appear in the top left corner of your screen. This even works in map mode! Conversely, when you are inside a factory building and hovering over the factory power monitor (the substation thing by the entrance), you will see a preview of what is outside the factory. Additionally, when you hold a deconstructed factory building in your cursor, you can see what is inside.

Q: What happens to pollution inside the factory building?
A: All pollution produced inside the factory building will leave the factory building. This means that putting things inside buildings does not help against pollution clouds.

Power

Q: How do I get electric power inside the factory?
A: Connect the outside of the building to a power source using electric poles. The inside of the factory building does not require any electric poles.

Q: Why aren't solar panels working inside my factory?
A: The interior lighting technology makes your factory bright by adding invisible lamps, not sunlight. You'll need to place your solar panels outside.

Q: My factory only receives 10/20/50MW of power. How do I increase that limit?
A: Find the yellow arrow symbol inside the factory building, near the entrance, and hover your cursor over it. Now press Factorissimo2's increase hotkey [default: Shift+R] to increase the power limit to the limit you need, the maximum limit is 100GW. You can press Factorissimo2's decrease hotkey [default: Ctrl+R] to decrease the limit again. The reason factory buildings don't have huge power throughput by default is that more throughput requires a proportionally bigger power buffer for Factorissimo2's internal workings, and filling that buffer can cause massive brownouts especially early-game.

Q: I want to build a power plant inside a factory building, but it doesn't seem to work. How do I make power go outside?
A: Due to technical limitations, it is not possible for a factory building to send and receive power at the same time. However, you can easily change which way the power flows: Find the yellow arrow symbol inside the factory building, near the entrance, and hover your cursor over it. Now press Factorissimo2's rotate hotkey [default: R]. This will change the direction of power flow, and the arrow will point in the direction power is flowing.

Connections

Q: How do I make things go in and out of the factory building?
A: Each factory building has 4-8 ports on each side. These ports can be used to connect various things outside of the factory to things inside the factory: belts, pipes, chests, or even circuits. Place a connectable thing at the outside location of some port, and place the same kind of thing at the inside location of the same port, and if they are compatible, they will form a connection, and you will see an icon appearing next to the connection on the inside of the factory building: green for belts, blue for pipes, brown for chests and red for circuits.

Q: I placed a belt/pipe/chest on the outside but it won't show up inside. What am I doing wrong?
A: That's how Factorissimo worked, but it's different for Factorissimo2. You have to place the inside belt/pipe/chest separately.

Q: Where exactly are the ports on the outside of the factory building?
A: There's a nice feature of Factorissimo2 to help you with that specifically: Press Factorissimo2's rotate hotkey [default: R] while hovering your cursor over the outside of the factory building, and maybe enable Factorio's extended info overlay [default: Alt] if you haven't already. You should now see some nice yellow arrows that help you see where the connections are. Use the rotate hotkey again to hide the arrows. [Note: These arrows cannot be seen if you have mining drill arrows disabled in Factorio's settings.]

Q: I'm placing everything correctly but it won't form a connection?
A: Make sure you've researched the proper technology first.

Q: How do I change the settings of a connection?
A: Hover over the connection icon inside the factory building and use Factorissimo2's hotkeys [default: R, Shift+R, Ctrl+R] as instructed in the tooltip to change the settings. Shift+R will usually make the connection update faster, Ctrl+R will make the connection update slower, and R will change the mode and direction of the connection. If you try to change a connection in a way that does not make sense, you will receive a funny hovertext.

Belt connections

Q: What kinds of belts can I connect to a factory building?
A: You can connect regular belts of any kind, as well as any kind of underground belts. Splitters and loaders will not connect.

Q: How can I make belts connect?
A: Place a belt on the outside of the port, and one on the inside. Make sure they're facing the same direction. You can mix and match different speeds of belts, and you can mix and match regular belts and underground belts.

Fluid connections

Q: How do I unlock fluid connections?
A: You need to research the "Factory upgrade: Fluid connections" technology.

Q: What kinds of fluid-using entities can I connect to a factory building?
A: You can connect any type of pipe, pipe-to-ground or storage tank. Other types of entities (pumps, assemblers, refineries) cannot connect directly.

Q: How do I make more fluid go through the fluid connection?
A: The most important thing is to set the transfer direction of your fluid connection using Factorissimo2's rotate hotkey [default: R]. You can also modify the transfer speed using Factorissimo2's increase and decrease hotkeys [default: Shift+R, Ctrl+R]. The default is one transfer every 10 ticks; you can set it to every tick, but increasing the speed of transfers can be bad for your UPS if you do this a lot. Instead I recommend learning how to use bulk transfer pipes (see next question), they let you transfer massive amounts of fluid at minimal effort.

Q: How exactly do I use the bulk transfer pipes that come with Factorissimo2?
A: The correct way to use them is to use one of each type at every connection. Use the input pipe (purple X) on the side the fluid comes from, and use the output pipe (yellow O) on the side the fluid goes to. Then set your fluid connection to transfer mode (in the correct direction) and set the transfer speed to the slowest speed you need. Here's a picture too. In almost every situation, the slowest transfer setting, 120 ticks per transfer, will be enough: it will still give you a throughput of 1250 units of fluid per second, which is more than enough for almost any application (an offshore pump produces only 1200 water per second, and (as of 0.16) vanilla pipes can't even transfer fluids much faster than that).

Chest connections

Q: How do I unlock chest connections?
A: You need to research the "Factory upgrade: Chest connections" technology.

Q: What kinds of chests can I connect to a factory building?
A: You can connect any vanilla or modded chest or logistics chest directly to the factory building. You can mix and match the various types of logistics chest, and you can mix logistics chests with regular chests.

Q: How do I get things into and out of chests faster?
A: If you're using regular chests, I recommend using loaders instead of inserters (loaders are not craftable in vanilla yet, but there are many mods that provide loaders). If you are using logistics chests, the answer is more roboports.

Q: What's the point of balance mode for chest connections?
A: For chest connections, balance mode is the proper mode to use with requester chests. If the chest connection was set to transfer mode, from a requester chest to another chest, and the requester chest was set to request, say, 50 steel, then it would keep requesting 50 steel from the logistics network, then transfer all of those to the other chest, then request 50 more steel, over and over until the other chest was full with steel. With balance mode, the requester chest would request 50 steel from the network, transfer half of it to the other chest, then request 25 more steel and transfer half of that, and so on, until both chests have about 50 steel, then it would stop requesting more steel until the other chest starts to empty out.

Another example: Suppose you have a requester chest with multiple requests set, say copper and steel. If the connection were set to transfer mode, it would be possible for the destination chest to fill up completely with steel, which would cause copper to stop being transferred. With balance mode, the destination chest cannot fill up, and both item types will still be transferred through the single requester chest.

Circuit connections

Q: How do I unlock circuit connections?
A: You need to research the "Factory upgrade: Circuit connections" technology.

Q: How do I connect circuits to a factory building?
A: You cannot hook the factory building up to circuit wire directly, instead you need to place factory circuit connectors at ports, and connect the circuit wire to those. Place an input circuit connector (purple) on the side the signals are coming from, and an output circuit connector (yellow) on the side the signals are going to.

Q: Why are not all the signals I send arriving?
A: Each circuit connection can only transfer up to 15 signals. This design is intentional, since transferring signals is very UPS expensive for technical reasons. This also means that factory buildings should absolutely not be used as programmable combinators, unless you're prepared to wave goodbye to your UPS. To make sure that the signals that you need actually arrive inside or outside, make sure that there are no unnecessary signals on the line. If you do need to transfer more than 15 signals, you can use multiple circuit connections.

Q: Why are short signal pulses not transferred through the connection?
A: The default update rate for circuit connections is only once every 60 ticks. You can modify the connection settings to make the circuit connections update every tick instead, but transferring signals is UPS expensive for technical reasons, so it is not recommended to change this setting unless it is critical to have immediate updates.

UPS

Q: How much UPS does Factorissimo2 use? Should I be worried?
A: No, you don't need to be worried. You might have heard that Factorissimo1 was relatively UPS hungry, but Factorissimo2 was rewritten with better design and much more potential for excellent performance. If you don't hit the UPS limit in vanilla, you will most likely also not hit the UPS limit using Factorissimo2.

Q: That sounds to me like there is still a significant UPS impact with certain things. Can I use Factorissimo2 for really large projects?
A: Yes, you can! By default, Factorissimo2 gives you a lot of convenient ways to do things, some more UPS intensive, some less intensive. Luckily, for everything you want to do in Factorissimo2 there is at least one very UPS-efficient way to do it.

Q: How do I use Factorissimo2 in a UPS-efficient manner?
A: There are a lot of things you can do!

Belt connections are quite demanding, as they need to teleport each item individually. Yellow belt connections need to transfer once every 9 ticks, and blue belt connections need to transfer once every 3 ticks, to keep the belt running smoothly. Faster modded belts need to transfer even more often. Good practice is to not use faster belts than you strictly need (it is enough to put the slow belt on one side; the transfer rate will autoadjust to the speed of the slower belt), however if you're aiming straight for UPS then chest connections using loaders are a much better alternative to belt connections. Replace the belt connection with a chest connection, place down loaders so the chests fill and empty onto the belts that are still there, and if you like, go inside and dial every chest connection down to transfer only every 600 updates (default is 60 updates, which is still a huge improvement).

Fluid connections are also quite demanding if they are set to update often. However, updating often is not necessary if you connect properly with bulk transfer pipes (see the fluid connections section of the FAQ). For even better performance (and also probably higher throughput) you could barrel your fluids and send them through using chest connections, although this may be offset by the space and processing power required by the barreling/unbarreling setup.

Chest connections are great. The default transfer rate may be one transfer every 60 updates, but since chests will attempt to transfer their entire inventory each time, there's not many situations where a transfer rate of once every 600 updates is not sufficient.

Circuit connections are not great. Use them sparingly and on slow transfer speeds. I'm probably exaggerating, but they're really not that good for your UPS.

The power transfer update is done every single tick by default, for every single constructed factory. This way, power buffers do not need to be that large, and the power graph will not become fuzzy. However, in the mod options screen, startup tab, there is an option to change the interval at which power is transferred if you're particularly desperate for UPS. If you change that, your power graph will become fuzzy at high resolutions, and your power buffers will become larger. Note that this may also cause the lights in factory buildings to flash if you're short on power, so if you have epilepsy you should probably not touch that setting.

Finally, there are multiple ways to structure your factory in ways that save some more of the UPS spent on Factorissimo2 by not routing your items through unnecessarily many ports. The most common bad example is the classic linear recursive setup, where you have a factory building, designed for mass production of some recipe, that contains a single copy of itself which it delegates most of its items to. The issue here is that most of the items go many levels deep before ever being processed, and then go many levels back out again. A better alternative is a branched recursive design, where each factory building contains either many other factory buildings, or the actual processing setup without any other factory buildings. This way, items will not need to go as many layers down as before (only logarithmically far assuming the hierarchy is balanced) before being processed. For even better performance, put the processing setup factory buildings side by side in the overworld instead of in another factory building; that way you'll need no nesting at all, and also fit more stuff inside processing.

If you've followed all of this advice (or even just the first parts), then Factorissimo2 is no longer any significant concern to your UPS, no matter how gigantic your base becomes. If you still really want to claim that final tiny scrap of performance for extra production instead of Factorissimo2, then you could try not using factory buildings at all. Who am I to tell you how you should use this mod? Maybe you just want to craft some factory buildings, then drop them onto the floor with Z instead of building them, so your garden gnomes from the Garden Gnomes mod can have tiny houses because their worker's union requested better living conditions.

Common issues

Q: When I want to place my first factory, I get an error saying "Unknown tile name: out-of-factory".
A: You have too many mods that add ground tile types, so there is not enough room for Factorissimo's factory interior tile types (Factorio only allows 256 tile types in total, across mods and the base game). Uninstall some mods that add ground or floor types, or configure them to use fewer tile types.

Miscellaneous

Q: I've lost a used factory building in my logistics system and requesting it doesn't work. How can I get it back?
A: Get yourself a factory requester chest (research it if you haven't yet) and build it in your logistics system. It will automatically request your lost and inactive factory buildings. Press Factorissimo2's rotate hotkey while hovering over the building to update its requests, or to switch request pages if there are more than 10 inactive factory buildings. When you're done using the factory requester chest, it's a good idea to deconstruct it, otherwise other factory buildings might end up inside it later.

Q: I've lost a used factory building, I'm 100% sure it's gone, and factory requester chests don't help. How can I get it back?
A: You (or at least the admin of your server) can use the "/give-lost-factory-buildings" command to receive all currently picked-up factory buildings as items. This will not delete other items referring to the same factory buildings, instead those will vanish with an "Invalid factory data!" message when you try to place them. Use "/give-lost-factory-buildings destroyed" to also get back any factories that were destroyed while they were placed down.

Q: I think that the factory research is too expensive. How can I make it cheaper?
A: In Factorissimo2 version 2.1.0 or later, you can go to Options -> Mods in Factorio's main menu and enable the "Easy research" setting. This makes factory building research a lot cheaper.

Q: I think recursion is overpowered. How can I disable recursion entirely, including the Recursion technologies?
A: In Factorissimo2 version 2.1.4 or later, you can go to Options -> Mods in Factorio's main menu and enable the "Hide recursion tech" setting. This will prevent you (and all other players on your server) from being able to research Recursion 1 or 2.

Q: I think recursion is awesome, and I don't want to have to research recursion. How can I enable recursion from the beginning?
A: In Factorissimo2 version 2.1.0 or later, you can go to Options -> Mods in Factorio's main menu and enable the "Free recursion" setting. This allows you to place factories recursively even without having researched Recursion 1 or 2. You may also want to hide the recursion technologies from your tech tree, because you don't need them anymore. For that, you can use the "Hide recursion tech" setting.

Q: Why can't I see the whole inside of the factory building in the preview window?
A: You're using a reduced GUI scale. Currently (0.16) camera GUI components don't scale with the GUI, so you'll have to go into the mod options (Options -> Mods -> Per player) and adjust the preview zoom setting.

Q: What does the name of the mod mean?
A: The comparative suffix -issimo means "very" or "more" or "most". So Factorissimo basically means "very Factorio", which of course doesn't really make grammatical sense since Factorio isn't an adjective. I think it still fits great though, because, well, this mod adds factory buildings to a factory building game.

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