Course policies, where to get Factorio and find your save files, and the in-browser factory simulator.
Admin#
Getting Factorio#
The course requires a licensed copy of Factorio. It is sold directly by the developer on GOG and on Steam, without a demo or free tier — either storefront’s full version is fine for this course, and the two run identically once installed.
Approved mods#
The following mods are approved for use in assessments and tutorials. All of them are visualisation or convenience tools — none change recipes, ratios, or game balance, so a save built with them stays comparable to one without:
- Timelapse Base Edition — captures screenshots of your base at set intervals for a time-lapse.
- Disco Science — labs light up in the colour of whatever science pack they’re consuming.
- Production Rates Calculator Extreme — shows production rates for selected buildings.
- Belt Visualizer — highlights a belt line and its individual lanes.
- Circuit Visualizer — highlights circuit network connections between combinators.
- Heat Visualizer — overlays a temperature scale on heat pipes.
- Tapeline — measures distances and marks out a flat working surface.
Any other mod needs the tutor’s sign-off before it touches a submitted save.
Blueprint provenance#
Using a blueprint you found online, in a book, or from a previous semester’s cohort is fine — cite where it came from, the same as any other source. Presenting someone else’s blueprint as your own original design, in a report or in conversation with a marker, is not. If a submission’s design decisions can’t actually be explained by the person who submitted it, that is treated as a provenance problem, not a knowledge gap.
Save files and version control#
Submissions are the save file named in the assessment brief, at the state it was in at the deadline. Keep your intermediate saves — a save history that shows a design arrived at gradually is the easiest way to answer a question about how a submission was built, and its absence is not treated as proof of anything on its own.
Finding your save files#
Assignments and tutorials that ask for a save file want the actual .zip
save from Factorio’s own saves folder, not an exported blueprint or
screenshot. The folder location depends on your OS:
- Windows:
%AppData%\Factorio\saves(i.e.C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\saves) - macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/factorio/saves - Linux:
~/.factorio/saves/
Each save is a single .zip file named after the save — submit that file
as-is, without renaming or re-zipping it.
Group-project conduct#
The group project is marked partly on collaboration evidence. Zones and roles agreed in Week 7 are expected to hold for the rest of the project; renegotiating them is fine, but silently redoing a teammate’s work without telling them is not, and repeatedly missing agreed contributions is a matter for the tutor, not something to solve by one person quietly covering for another.
Late work and extensions#
Extensions are granted on request, before the deadline, for a genuine reason — ask your tutor rather than submitting late and explaining afterwards. Weekly practicals are the exception: they are marked as a set at semester’s end, so a single missed week costs less than a missed assessment deadline does.
Accessibility and support#
If a tutorial’s format, a save file, or an assessment’s timing doesn’t work for you, tell your tutor or the convenor — the practical work in this course is flexible in how it’s demonstrated, even where the underlying skill being assessed isn’t.
Factory simulator#
The factory simulator lays out belts, inserters, assemblers, and power poles on a grid, runs them, and reports the bottleneck — useful for testing a balancer, a ratio, or a tileable layout before building it in Factorio itself. Several tutorials link to it directly; it is also linked here rather than in the site’s main navigation.