Smelting Arrays and the Mall

Early smelting ratios and the build-components mall that keeps every building type in stock.

At a glance

Two workhorses of an early factory: balanced smelting blocks that turn one belt of ore into one belt of ingots, and a “mall” that mass-produces buildings so you can pull any assembler, belt, or station from logistics on demand.


Smelting anchor	6 basic smelters drain one Mk.I ore belt (most recipes are 1 ore per second)
Miner anchor	2 miners, each on 6 veins, fill one Mk.I belt
Belt tiers	Mk.I 6 per second, Mk.II 12, Mk.III 30
Mall job	Produce buildings and one-off components, feed them into logistics storage

Smelting arrays

Arc Smelters (and later Plane Smelters) turn ore into ingots: iron, copper, stone brick, magnet, and so on, plus refined intermediates.
Most basic smelting recipes consume 1 ore per second, so 6 smelters consume a full Mk.I belt of ore.
Build refinery and smelting blocks belt-balanced: one full belt of ore in, one full belt of ingots out. Copy-paste the block as you scale.

Belt and sorter reference

Tier	Belt (items/sec)
Mk.I	6
Mk.II	12
Mk.III	30

Sorters (Mk.I to Mk.III, plus the later Pile Sorter) move items between belts and buildings and can reach belts 1, 2, or 3 tiles away. Higher tiers move faster; the top-tier pile sorters move stacked cargo.

The mall

The mall is a factory whose whole job is to make buildings and one-off parts on demand: assemblers, smelters, belts, sorters, stations, drones, vessels, warpers, and proliferator. It feeds finished buildings into logistics storage so you can pull them from anywhere.

Common designs run a “sushi belt” (several item types on one belt) plus interstellar stations and proliferator to keep every building type stocked.
Over-build the chronic bottleneck intermediates that also feed the mall: iron ingots, electromagnetic turbines, processors, graphene, and plane filters.

Do this in order

Set up two miners per Mk.I ore belt for iron and copper.
Feed each ore belt into 6 smelters for a full belt of ingots.
Automate the basics: circuit boards, magnetic coils, magnets, gears.
Build a small mall block for assemblers, belts, sorters, and stations.
Once logistics is unlocked, add proliferator and route it through the mall.
Expand the mall to drones, vessels, and warpers as interstellar tech comes online.

Watch out for

Mk.I assemblers run at 0.75x speed. Multiply machine counts by 4/3 or upgrade the tier.
Delay proliferator until logistics is unlocked; sprayed inputs need every input sprayed to count.