Factory Automation: Power, Conveyors, Porters and Production Ratios

Every Keeper eventually notices that the corpses work cheaper than he does. The Factory turns that into an industry: zombies walk in circles to make power, other zombies haul ore and logs from across the map, and a row of benches turns it all into kits and supply crates without costing you a point of energy.

Why bother: Factory recipes versus hand-crafting

The Factory is not just hands-free; for kits it is far cheaper. Wooden, Iron and Building kits cost a fraction of the materials on a Factory station, and the Smithy burns Coal instead of Fuel. Cloth is the exception: Factory Fabric needs four times the Flax of the hand route.

Town restoration eats kits by the dozen, so the Factory is where your town gets rebuilt. Traders cover part of the bill (the Builder sells Building Kit I and, from level 2, Building Kit II; the Furniture Maker sells Wooden Kit I, then Furniture Kit I from level 2 and Furniture Kit II from level 3), but Wooden Kit II is made only at Factory stations. It also feeds the Supplier achievement (50 supply crates), which fewer than one player in five has.

Opening the Factory

The Factory sits under the Keeper’s house. It has five entrances and clearing any one of them counts as finding it:

• two blockages in the south wall of the house basement,
• one in the Vineyard Basement,
• one in the tunnel under the Crossroads well,
• one between the Factory hall and the Old Mine.

Every entrance needs a Reinforced Beam plus 4 Iron Detail, except the mine side, which takes 4 Building Kit I + 1 Reinforced Beam. Building mastery runs from 3 to 8 depending on the entrance, and the house-basement side and the mine side want the full 8. Beams start with Wooden beams from the Circular Saw, which needs 40 Jack reputation, so in practice you get in after Jack’s first iron orders.

Inside you will find 2 Broken Zombie Carousels, 3 empty Carousel spots, seven raw-material heaps, 6 Broken Conveyor Mechanisms that each open more floor once repaired (two of them need steel parts), and 2 Broken Walls that take 1 Dynamite each. Clear the rubble on the east side for a ladder straight up to the Yard.

The technologies you need

The tech priorities guide shows where these fit in the wider research order.

Power: Zombie Carousels

Belts and stations run on power, and power comes from zombies walking in a Zombie Carousel: 7 per zombie, 4 zombies per Carousel. The Keeper talent Belt Master (one Building inspiration point, once you own the fourth Building mastery node) raises that to 10 per zombie, a 43% boost; see talents and inspirations.

• The two Broken Carousels cost 6 Bronze Gear + 4 Bronze Detail + 4 Wooden Plank each to repair, at Building 5, with no technology needed.
• The three new spots take 6 Bronze Gear + 6 Iron Detail + 4 Wooden beam each, after Zombie Gears.
• Maximum: 5 Carousels x 4 zombies = 140 power, or 200 with Belt Master.
• Any zombie works. Skulls, perks and tools change nothing on a Carousel, and walkers earn no tech points. This is the job for your worst corpses.
• A repaired but empty Carousel gives 0 power.

What uses power

Two lines in that table are not settled. Whether workstations draw power is still an open question, so budget 1 each and you will never be caught short. The Underground Conveyor is either as hungry as a belt or much cheaper over distance; place one and read the meter before you rebuild a whole line around it.

Factory rating and Jack’s Factory Tour

The Factory meter shows belt cells in use against power. Its rating is the lower of the two, and Factory Tour, Jack’s request after Man of Steel, wants 20. A demand of 10 against 21 power rates 10; 25 cells on 20 power rates 20 but leaves you underpowered, which stops the Factory.

A cheap pass: 20 Conveyor Belt cells (20 Bronze Gear + 20 Fabric) and three zombies walking for 21 power. Two Belt Master walkers give exactly 20, which holds only while nothing else on the floor draws power, so the third walker is the safer pass. Choose “Show my factory” at Jack’s Workshop for +10 Jack reputation, one of the two steps that take him from 60 to the 80 a later story step asks for.

The rules of the belt

Six rules turn a tidy plan into a working line, and they are written out once, with grids that obey them, in the Factory layouts guide. In short: a station has two inputs and one output on opposite sides; it takes items only from a belt pointing into an input, never from a chest or your hands; it makes one recipe; belts carry 1 item per cell; Logs and packed supply crates never enter chests; and belts pull from every Conveyor Chest they touch. One rule matters mostly here: the Keeper can build straight from materials stored in Conveyor Chests, which makes a full chest next to the build area a handy stockroom.

The seven heaps

The bottom of the Factory has seven raw heaps: Log, Stone, Sand, Clay, Coal, Iron Ore and Marble. Porters fill them, and a belt can run straight from a heap into a station input. They share their contents with the seven heaps that appear in the Yard by the house once the Factory is found, so before any porter exists you can feed the Factory by dumping materials in the Yard.

Zombie crews: who works where

Every zombie starts at 0 in all five masteries and cannot start most recipes until it holds a tool of the station’s branch. A zombie’s mastery is its bought mastery nodes, plus the tool in its hand (Rusty +1, Bronze +2, Iron +4, Steel +6), plus any matching perk. Building uses axes and pickaxes, Smithing uses hammers, Farming uses shovels.

Speed rule: each tick adds floor(mastery / required mastery) to progress, capped at 3. Twice the requirement halves the ticks, three times the requirement cuts them to a third, and anything beyond that is wasted.

Red skulls are slots: every node a zombie buys, mastery or perk, uses one. The zombies guide covers skulls, collars and training in full.

Mastery targets for full speed

The first two Building or Smithing mastery nodes cost 50 and 100 red points. Building Kit I at full speed needs seven nodes, which means seven red skulls, more than a Bronze collar allows. Plan your best Building zombie for that bench.

Feeding the Factory: gathering posts and porters

Zombie gathering produces raw materials from nothing, forever. Its technologies stay hidden until both ends of the Old Mine are open: the Quarry cave (Dynamite, Building 8) and the Factory-side blockage (4 Building Kit I + 1 Reinforced Beam, Building 8). If you cannot find these techs, that is why; see progression blockers.

Every post takes 8 ticks per cycle and pays the zombie 1 red point per cycle. The perks Logger, Zombie Miner, Quarryman and Excavator cut a cycle to 6 ticks, which at full speed means 2 ticks instead of 3. Magpie’s Eye adds a 10% chance of a Gem per Zombie Miner cycle. The Zombie Miner is also the only way to get Coal, and the Smithy needs Coal for Iron Ingot, Brick, Glass, Tableware, Glass Containers, Clay Molds and Lens.

Porter routes

A Porter Station zombie carries the goods you tick from its area’s chests to a fixed destination, in a 4-slot pack.

• Nothing is ticked by default. A porter with an empty list carries nothing.
• The Quarry needs a Zombie Supplier Station and a chest to collect the stone before its porter can take it. The mine, the Sawmill (Timber stockpile, 9 slots) and the diggers store their output directly, but build a chest at Riverside first.
• A Quarry porter can jam when its pack fills with one of its two goods. Untick the other good, or pick the porter up to empty it.
• Never pick up a porter mid-trip without thinking: whatever is in its pack drops.
• Gardens join in through Zombie Gardening: a zombie with a shovel on a Gardener Stand works every row marked by a crop Tablet, and the Lifting Crane carries ticked crops into Garden Storage, which the Factory can belt from. That is your Flax, Wheat, Carrot and Onion.

Covering every raw material takes at least 11 zombies: one on each of the six kinds of post, four porters (Clay and Sand share one) and the Quarry’s supplier.

Production chains and ratios

Iron: the backbone

1 miner : 1 ingot Smithy : 1 kit Smithy, and the chain produces 4 Iron Kit I per miner cycle with one Coal left over each time. Send that spare Coal to a Brick or Glass Smithy. A Supply: Iron crate takes 8 Iron Ingots, so it costs eight miner cycles. Give the miner the Zombie Miner perk and it outruns one ingot Smithy by half again; the surplus waits in the heap.

Wood

The Lumberjack takes 3 ticks per Log at full speed (2 with Logger). A Wooden Kit I bench at full speed takes 4 ticks per Log with nails or 5 with the Auto-hammer. One lumberjack therefore keeps about 1.3 nail benches or 1.7 Auto-hammer benches busy, or 2 and 2.5 with Logger. Every Log becomes 4 Wooden Kit I either way.

Stone, Brick and Building Kit I

• Stone Kit: 2 Stone per kit, 3 ticks at full speed. One bench needs both Stone Quarry spots working at full speed.
• Brick: 2 Clay + 1 Coal make 2 Brick at the Smithy. The single Clay Digger brings 1 Clay per cycle, so it supplies 1 Brick per cycle and keeps a Brick Smithy only half busy.
• Building Kit I: 1 Stone Kit + 1 Brick on an Auto-hammer bench, 3 ticks at Building 15.

Put together: 2 Stone Quarry zombies + 1 Clay Digger + 1 Stone Kit bench + 1 Brick Smithy + 1 Building Kit bench give 1 Building Kit I per cycle, using half a Coal per kit, which the iron chain’s spare Coal covers. Clay and Stone set the ceiling: there is only one Clay Digger and two Stone Quarry spots, so without the Excavator and Quarryman perks the line cannot go faster.

Top up the Clay heap by hand when the town wants a big batch, or fire Brick in the Kiln, where 4 Clay + 10 Fuel make 6 Brick instead of the Smithy’s 2 from 2 Clay, and feed them in from a Conveyor Chest. At Building 10 the kit bench runs at 2x and takes 4 ticks, slightly slower than its suppliers.

Glass and the sand problem

Factory Glass takes 3 Sand + 1 Coal per pane. The single Sand Digger brings 1 Sand per cycle, which keeps a Glass Smithy busy only a third of the time. If you need Glass in bulk (the Bioreactor alone costs 10), shovel Sand into the Yard heap yourself, or smelt it at a Furnace, where 3 Sand + 10 Fuel make 3 Glass: three times the Glass per Sand.

Fabric

Both Fabric and Supply: Fabric take 16 Flax on a bench with the Spinning wheel. A zombie with the Tailor perk makes 2 of either from the same 16 Flax. Feed Flax into both inputs: delivering the 16 Flax goes roughly twice as fast.

Factory Fabric is the dear way to make cloth, though. By hand, 4 Flax become 4 Flax Thread at the Spinning Wheel and then 1 Fabric at the Weaving Loom: a quarter of the bench’s Flax, and still half of a Tailor zombie’s. Weave the Fabric for your belt cells by hand and keep the bench Flax for Supply: Fabric, which costs 16 Flax either way (8 per crate with a Tailor) and simply spares your energy down here.

From belt to town: the supply chain

Town orders want packed crates, and a crate travels like this:

1. A station crafts the Supply: recipe (not the plain kit).
2. A belt carries it to a Supply Station, which accepts only supply crates, one at a time.
3. A zombie on a Zombie Supply Porter (4 Wooden Plank + 8 Iron Nails + 2 Iron Detail) carries each crate into the Supply Storage room onto a free Supply Pallet (6 Wooden Plank + 2 Wooden beam + 12 Bronze Nails, 2 crates; 4 crates after the Supply Pallet II upgrade).
4. A zombie on the Supply Storage Porter Station carries crates through the tunnel to the Warehouse Cellar under the Town Warehouse. The first station needs both blockages in the well tunnel and both in the Warehouse Cellar cleared; the second unlocks with Wooden Kit II.

When every pallet is full, the Supply Porter stops and the line behind it backs up. Crates with no order to fill earn no Likes: whatever sits in the warehouse when the day rolls into Pride is sold off at base price (50 bronze to 2 silver a crate) and does not carry over. Take your orders on Pride first (see the weekly calendar), deliver during the week, and untick the surplus in the warehouse porter’s window once an order is full.

Every supply crate the Factory can make

Higher station tiers keep every recipe of the tier below, so an Assembly bench III makes all of these bench crates. Zombie Power, used by two of these crates and by the Zombie Mechanism, only comes from the Bioreactor: 5 Wheat in on the left, 1 Zombie Power out on the right, 10 ticks, no zombie needed. It is an item, not electricity, so it adds nothing to your power.

Layouts that work

There is no single best layout, because the floor grows as you repair mechanisms, but three principles hold at every size. Build next to the heaps, with short belts straight from each heap into a station. Make small modules, each with its own input and output chests, instead of one snake across the room. And use Conveyor Chests (0 power) in place of splitters and long belt runs, with an Underground Conveyor only for long hauls once you have read the meter after the first one.

The Factory layouts guide draws six working modules as grids with their power, crew and output (Wooden Kit starter, Fabric for orders, iron hub, Building Kit I block, Iron Tools crates, wheat and flour), a three-stage plan for the whole floor, and what to build in every basement and work zone.

What to automate first

1. Open the Factory and light it. Repair one Broken Carousel, put two weak zombies in it, research Conveyors, Assembly bench and Wooden Kit I. Run the kit starter with Logs dumped in the Yard heap.
2. Start filling town orders with Supply: Fabric. Research Fabric (Building), Crate and Zombie Delivery, add the Spinning wheel and the supply chain, and clear the two blockages in the well tunnel and the two in the Warehouse Cellar so the Supply Storage porter can reach town. This is also how the Supplier achievement starts ticking.
3. Add iron kits. Smithy I, Smithy: Hammer and Zombie Gears for more Carousels. There is no Coal until a Zombie Miner works, so for now drop Furnace-smelted Iron Ingots into a Conveyor Chest and belt them to the Hammer Smithy: each still becomes 4 Iron Kit I. Iron Kit I feeds Crates, Supply: Furniture and town restoration.
4. Open the Old Mine from both ends. Your first four Building Kit I (hand-made at the Woodworking Workbench I if need be) open the Factory side; Dynamite opens the Quarry cave. Then research the gathering posts and porters: the miner brings the Coal, the Smithy can smelt its own ingots, and the iron chain runs without you.
5. Close the Building Kit I loop: research Building Kit I (110 red, 10 blue), fit the Auto-hammer, and feed it with two Stone Quarry zombies, the Clay Digger and a Brick Smithy. Point it at town restoration.
6. Go tier II: Assembly bench II (110 red, 20 blue), Vegetable Supplies for Kitchen I, and the Bioreactor (130 red, 20 blue) so Zombie Power is stocked before anyone asks for it.
7. Late game: Smithy II, Assembly bench III, all five Carousels with Belt Master, and the tier II kits.

A big Factory means a lot of zombies, and your zombie limit starts at effectively 0. Every walker and porter counts, so read the Excessive zombies section of the zombies guide before you staff a Factory crew.

Extensions: which one goes where

Station build costs live on each station’s page: Assembly bench I and Smithy I both take 6 Reinforced Plank + 4 Bronze Gear + 4 Bronze Detail, while higher tiers climb to Reinforced Beams and Advanced Detail, then Steel Screws and Engineering Details for Assembly bench III and Smithy II. Extensions are where layouts go wrong, so here they all are.

Mind the spots. An Assembly bench has one small spot for the Auto-hammer or the Spinning wheel; tiers II and III add one large spot for the Drill press, Lathe or Sewing machine. A Smithy has one small spot (Bellows) and one large spot for the Hammer, Press or Grindstone. While a bench carries the Spinning wheel it cannot make Building Kit I, and a Smithy carrying the Hammer cannot make Lens. Dismantling refunds everything down here, so a wrong extension costs a rebuild, not materials.

Skip the Grindstone: no known recipe uses it, and it would take the Hammer’s spot. The crafting calculator breaks any of these costs down to raw materials.

Common mistakes

• Laying belts faster than you add walkers. One cell over capacity stops the whole Factory, Bioreactor included.
• Expecting a chest or your own hands to feed a station. Only a belt pointing into an input works.
• Trying to store Logs or crates in Conveyor Chests. Logs go straight from the heap; crates go to a Supply Station.
• Using splitters as sorters. They alternate; a filtered chest sorts.
• Wasting red skulls on Carousels and porters, or putting a fresh zombie on Building Kit I: it needs Building 5 just to start, which an iron tool alone does not give.
• Forgetting the tool. A zombie without a tool of the station’s branch usually cannot start the recipe at all.
• Queueing crates with no order to fill. They earn no Likes, the Pride sell-off pays only their base price, and full pallets jam the line behind them.
• Leaving porter windows empty. Nothing is ticked until you tick it.
• Building the Auto-hammer where you wanted Fabric. The two share one spot.
• Ignoring the zombie limit. Once a limit check catches a thirty-zombie Factory with no PR plan, Excessive zombies trims Faith and coin from most sermons until a later check clears it.