Factories & Production

The Macro Factory is the main production block in StarMade. It can craft any block in the game, but only performs the final assembly step of the crafting tree. A full production line requires multiple linked factories.

Placing a Factory

Macro factories can only be placed on a station or a planet — they cannot be placed on ships.

Factories require power to operate. You can supply power by: - Shooting the factory with a personal power beam - Placing Power Recharge Blocks near the factory - Building on or near a powered station

Setting Up Production

  1. Press R on the factory to open its interface.
  2. Click Change Production.
  3. Use the search filter to find the item you want to produce (e.g. type "power" to find Power Reactor Module).
  4. Select the item from the dropdown.
  5. Click View Graph to see the full crafting tree for that item.

The Graph View

The View Graph button shows the entire crafting tree as a flowchart. The factory only processes the topmost step — everything below it must be handled by separate factories.

Example: Power Reactor Module

[Power Reactor Module]   ← THIS factory produces this
  ├─ [Metal Mesh]        ← another factory must provide this
  │    └─ [Ore Capsules] ← another factory provides this
  └─ [Active Varat Proc] ← another factory must provide this
       ├─ [Metal Mesh]
       └─ [Shard Caps]

Your top factory takes Metal Mesh and Active Varat Processor as inputs and outputs Power Reactor Modules. You need additional factories set up to produce each of those.

Factory Linking (Chaining)

Factories can pull ingredients from each other automatically using connections:

  1. Press C on the factory you want to act as the ingredient source (it holds raw materials or intermediate products).
  2. Press V on the factory that needs those ingredients.
  3. The second factory will now draw needed materials from the first automatically.

With a properly linked chain, you place raw materials into the bottom factory and the top factory outputs the final product — everything in between is handled automatically.

Factory Manager

The Factory Manager block automates an entire production chain. Instead of manually setting recipes and linking factories one by one, a Factory Manager analyzes what needs to be built, figures out what raw materials are missing, and assigns recipes to connected factories automatically.

How It Works

  1. Place a Factory Manager on your station.
  2. Connect it to your factories — link the Factory Manager to every factory you want it to control using C (on the manager) and V (on each factory). It supports all factory types (Basic, Standard, Advanced, Micro Assembler, Capsule Assembler).
  3. Connect it to storage — link the Factory Manager to inventories (storage blocks) so it can see what raw materials are available.
  4. Place an order — tell the manager what you want produced. Orders can come from:
  5. A factory — the manager reads what recipe is set and ensures all intermediate ingredients are produced.
  6. A shipyard — the manager produces all blocks needed for a ship under construction.
  7. A storage filter — the manager keeps a storage filled to the quantities defined in its filter.

Order Processing

When an order is placed, the Factory Manager:

  1. Walks the crafting tree — starting from the requested item, it recursively determines every intermediate product and raw material needed.
  2. Checks inventories — it scans connected storage to see what materials are already available and reserves them.
  3. Identifies shortages — any raw material that no connected factory can produce is added to a shopping list (materials the player must supply).
  4. Prioritizes production — items are sorted by urgency. Bottleneck ingredients (ones blocking other production steps) are prioritized over items already in surplus.
  5. Assigns recipes to factories — the manager sets each connected factory's recipe and production limit automatically, activating idle factories and shutting down ones with nothing to produce.

Production Capacity

The Factory Manager accounts for the capability of each factory (based on how many factory blocks are grouped together). When deciding how much to produce per cycle, it estimates combined capacity as roughly the sum of all factory capabilities of a given type, ensuring larger factories are assigned work first.

Shopping List & Clipboard

The Factory Manager tracks two resource lists:

  • Needed (remaining) — raw materials still required to complete the current order.
  • Total — all raw materials the full order requires from the start.

Both lists can be copied to the clipboard directly from the Factory Manager interface, making it easy to see exactly what you need to gather.

Graph View Colors

When viewing the crafting graph through a Factory Manager, nodes are color-coded:

Color Meaning
Green Resource is fully stocked
Blue Resource is partially available
Red Resource is missing or insufficient

Tips

  • Start small. Craft a basic factory (from 10 Metal Meshes or 10 Crystal Circuits in the personal micro-factory) to begin. The macro factory comes later.
  • Power matters. A factory without power stalls. Place power recharge blocks near factory clusters.
  • Use View Graph every time you set up a new production line — it clearly shows exactly what inputs the factory expects at each step.
  • Multiple factories can be linked to one source factory — the source will supply whatever any of its connected factories need.
  • Use a Factory Manager for complex production chains — it eliminates the tedious manual setup of recipe assignment and linking, especially when producing blocks that require many intermediate steps.