Logistics Guide: Transport Belts, Trains & Robots

Logistics in Factorio covers the systems and buildings used to move items and fluids, automate supply, and route resources across your factory and between outposts. Good logistics design reduces manual hauling, keeps production running smoothly, and enables large-scale automation (including trains, logistic robots and automated stations).

Transport belts and belt systems

• Transport belts are the basic, passive way to move items. There are multiple tiers (basic, fast, express, and DLC belts) with increasing speed; each belt has two lanes and thus effectively doubles single-lane throughput. Belts themselves consume no electricity.
• Underground belts and splitters extend belt functionality: underground belts let you cross or tunnel lanes; splitters balance or duplicate flows and are fundamental for balancers and main-bus designs.
• Common design concepts:
  • Main bus: run many parallel belts of common items down a central spine so assemblers and sub-factories can pull what they need.
  • Balancers: use splitters/underground belts to ensure even distribution from X inputs to Y outputs (e.g., 4-to-4 balancer patterns).
  • Avoid “spaghetti”: tangled, unstructured belts become hard to expand and debug. Use modular lanes and consistent spacing.

Inserters and loaders

• Inserters are the active element that move items between belts, chests, assemblers and cargo wagons. Inserters operate at normal inserter speeds unless upgraded.
• Inserter orientation and reach determine loading/unloading capability at train stops and along production lines. Long-handed inserters can reach over gaps (useful for barrel transfers or bridging pipes).

Fluid logistics: pumps and barrels

• Fluid wagons/tank cars require pumps to load and unload; up to three pumps can connect to a single fluid wagon at once.
• Barrels (filled/empty) are useful when pipes are impractical: they allow fluids to be transported by belts, trains, vehicles or logistic robots. Barrels are especially handy for remote oil fields, small fluid quantities, or transfers across gaps (lava, platform edges).

Trains and railway logistics

• Train infrastructure consists of rails, stations (train stops), signals and locomotives/wagons. Rail is laid on a two-tile grid; rails cannot be shifted by one tile.
• Train stops are the only way to automatically load/unload cargo wagons and to use pumps for fluid wagons. A station conceptually comprises a train stop (the entity), chests/pumps and inserters/pumps placed at the correct side of the track.
• Scheduling and wait conditions:
  • Train schedules are ordered lists of station entries; upon reaching the last station the schedule loops.
  • Stop wait conditions include time, full cargo, empty cargo, count of a specific item, and circuit-network signal conditions.
• Pathfinding and multiple stops:
  • Trains in automatic mode choose the shortest path to an enabled stop with the matching name (pathfinding distance accounts for other trains).
  • When multiple stops share a name, trains will prefer a closer enabled stop. If a stop is disabled or has reached its train limit, trains will seek another enabled stop with the same name; if none exist the train enters a “destination full” state and waits.
• Train limits:
  • Each train stop can have a “train limit” which caps how many trains may reserve that stop as a destination. If the number of trains headed to the stop is greater than or equal to the limit, other trains will not select that stop.
• Signals and rail safety:
  • Rail signals have distinct states (green/yellow/red/blinking) that control train movement and block reservation: red stops trains, yellow indicates an approaching train has permission to pass, green means block free. Chain signals exist to control junctions.
• Cargo and wagon choices:
  • Cargo wagon capacity depends on item type: a wagon can hold more processed plates than raw ores (preprocessing ores into plates near the mine can increase throughput).
  • Artillery wagons can carry artillery shells (100 shells per wagon) and are the most space-efficient for shell transport, but are heavy and have other combat-related limitations.

Logistic robots and roboports

• Logistic robots automate item transfers and construction tasks within a logistic network defined by overlapping roboport coverage.
• Roboports are the core: they provide network coverage, store robots and repair packs (7 slots for up to 50 robots each slot and 7 slots for repair packs), and allow requesting idle robots from other roboports by minimum-request settings.
• Logistic chest types:
  • Provider chests (active/passive), requester chests, storage chests, buffer chests and requester/buffer hybrids. Each type has specific behavior: providers supply the network, requester chests ask for items, storage holds surplus, and buffer chests act as intermediate supply points.
• Construction robots:
  • Perform building, deconstruction and repair tasks; they fetch items for construction from the closest logistic chests (but will not remove items from requester chests to fulfill construction).
  • Robot cargo size is increased by research (default capacity per robot is small and can be upgraded).
• Personal roboports:
  • Equipment-grid-mounted personal roboports create a separate mobile roboport network using the entity’s inventory; they do not share robots/items with static networks and have no use for logistic robots (they use construction robots only).

Circuit network and logistics integration

• The circuit network (red/green wires and combinators) links machines, chests and signals to enable conditional control of logistic and train infrastructure.
• Use cases:
  • Control train stops and signals: set a wire condition to disable/enable stops or force signals red.
  • Control inserters and pumps based on chest contents or production levels.
  • Match logistic requests to signals: constant combinators can send item-request values to indicate minimum/maximum amounts; when used with logistic groups, items have both minimum-request and maximum-storage values.
  • Circuit conditions can be used to set train stop wait conditions and to route trains only when a station needs items.
• Special logistics requests (Space Age / DLC):
  • Some orbital platforms/launch sites can issue logistic requests targeted at specific surfaces/planets and include extra parameters such as target planet and custom minimum payload for rockets. These requests are handled differently from standard logistic networks.

Blueprints, planning and organization

• Use blueprints and blueprint books to standardize logistic modules (belt balancers, stations, roboport layouts). Organize blueprints by function (mining, smelting, power, research, logistics) and scale/stage to keep designs reusable and easy to find.
• Nest blueprints in books (e.g., logistics → belts/bots/fluids → balancers/stations) so you can quickly place modular, well-tested layouts during expansion.

Practical tips and workflows

• Preprocess ores into plates near the mine when beneficial — processed plates can occupy less wagon slots and increase effective throughput.
• Use buffer chests at station edges to decouple trains from local inserter timing and to centralize supply for nearby assemblers or roboports.
• For high-throughput rail stations, place enough inserters/pumps to match the train dwell time and desired throughput; ensure signals and pathing prevent starvation or deadlocks.
• Combine circuit-network conditions with train scheduling to avoid sending trains to full destinations (set stop enable/disable or train limits to coordinate multiple stations).
• When scaling, prefer modular, repeatable station and belt patterns and keep main bus lanes consistent to reduce manual rerouting.

This covers the core systems and practices of logistics in Factorio: belts and balancers, inserters and pumps, trains and stations, logistic robots and roboports, and how the circuit network ties them together. Effective logistics design is modular, measurable and predictable — build reusable modules, instrument them with signals, and expand by repeating proven patterns.