This is a re-upload because the other one was a bit too much with the text boxes, and I'd rather some people get lost with some minute detail than everyone be overwhelmed with information. Yes, I'm going to do a MUCH more in depth tutorial after this that's filled with practical examples, but hopefully this will familiarize you with the basics of how they work mechanically. Hopefully this is a good enough introduction. And I stand by that you don't actually need to know anything beyond this to use circuits effectively in normal gameplay.

Quick, simple, easy to understand, and most importantly: not 50 minutes

These tutorials are brilliant. I've forgotten everything in the train one, but I've also forgotten everything from all the 50 minute train videos Ive watched, it's inevitable. Much nicer to just watch a short refresher :)

Using signals to count the ore at a train stop, and only allowing trains in when there was enough ore for a pick up (to prevent trains hanging out in loading bays for too long) was probably the most complex things I've done with signals. Looking forward to upping my game.

Something very important to note about signals is that they always default to *0* whenever there's nothing else going on This means you only need a single Decider Combinator to rig a train stop to flip between having 0 or 1 maximum waiting trains, based on whatever signal! (I personally string together the train stop's storage chests to the combinator and have the signal be Having Enough/Not Enough of the item the station is giving/receiving)

Love these short-form videos. A lot of Factorio creators don't seem to understand how to do them properly, either because they're unnecessarily long winded and/or aren't using a script. I know a lot of work goes into making something short good. "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." - Blaise Pascal

Hell you can honestly do just about everything you need in a vanilla playthrough with just wires, you don't even need the combinators

I like how you can do banger 1 hour videos and at the same time quick and simple "tutorials"

Most of my understanding of wires in this game comes from me decyphering your ramblings about using them during your videos, so it's really nice to get an actual tutorial from the expert.

This is an ideal tutorial. My primary issue with most game tutorials, including factorio, is that everyone takes too damn long to explain something simple, this leads to people thinking easy concepts are hard. 99% of factorio signals are setting a X>Y=enable signal, definitely dont need 20 minutes to cover that. Great job as always. I'm not sure I like the re-upload more, but removing them makes for a cleaner video and doesn't compel me to pause constantly to read the clarification, so its fair play.

Literally the best Factorio tutorials. Specific enough to give you a general understanding but vague enough to let you screw around and find out the rest. Thank you!

Man, your ciruit builds in your videos were always mindblowing. Now that you're doing a tutorial on circuits i cant feel but get super hyped on what i might learn to improve my factories 😄

Thanks for making these. I've always been too overwhelmed with trying to learn shit from the wiki, so this actually helped me understand it in way less time

I spent 20 minutes frustrated on christmas eve wondering why my combinator wasnt letting me turn on and off a platform trying to compare the box to the rail, watched like 3 tutorial videos that didnt explain anything.. and this video did it in 35 seconds. thanks dosh. your videos saved me again.. this time from insanity

Thanks for the concise video, I mainly use the circuits to alert me when bottlenecks happen for now, but I'll think of ways to intergrate them better.

I can't say that I'm interested in the subject but I can't help myself, Dosh speaking about complicated things in my ears is why I like their videos.

As I've had to explain signals in Factorio about 40+ times now having this is so much better... just slap your friends with this and problem solved, thanks Dosh!

This is actually understandable and useful, thanks

Good to understand how these Circuit Networks actually work, since I've actually never used them. When it came to trains, I at least ran one circle train (That was 6 cargo wagons long) to run a mass transit of materials around my base... but now I'm learning how to actually USE Networks and Trains, thanks to these videos Dosh. Thanks for everything you've done!

I feel like I’ve seen this before

Im on my first factorio world and I just unlocked these. Perfect timing.

I look forward to the in-depth tutorial. I know the basics, but coming up with usecases that actually help my base is the hard part. If it fits the tutorial, can you show some designs you tend to use a lot?

Thank you very much, I've been playing the game since 2016 and never knew the complete mechanics of combinators. Now I know what the second output option in decider combinator means, thank you very much.

I don't know if this video exists because of my comment two weeks ago or not, but thank you for making it anyway

id love more factorio tutorials! they're short and to the point unlike most other tutorials on KZfaq

This was a perfect summary, thankyou

This is the one area of the game i just can't get my brain to wrap around & thus never used only tried miserably. Looking forward to the long explanation video bcos I'm going to need it 😅.

Please make more quick tutorials like this

Best tut on this so far.

This is brilliant! And while you do have a in-depth tutorial on circuits coming up, I was wondering if you could do another three to five minute video explaining how to make and use clocks, memory cells, and latches? (Or at least a video that is them extracted from the master course) They are things I try to use and have read up on plenty, but can never remember how to set them up. Having a video about those specifically would be really helpful.

Like all the rest of your videos I will sit here with a confused look and in awe that someone understands this.

thank you so very much, I doubt i will ever be as good as you but this helps me not be as bad. cant wait till you upload the advanced.

I really enjoy your videos your a genius

Broooo, this is what i neeeeded, thanks so much!

Thid video is godsent, I am doing my first full factorio run and my favourite factorio youtuber does a tutorial! Nice!

when advanced course

thank you for this! as an EE and study power stuff i know bacis but this still helped.

Oh thank god I understand so much more of the space exploration gameplay now🤯

I'm playing SpaceKrastorio, and thank you. I knew this video would come in handy :D

i lost it when you said "wire", need to rewatch it again i suppoz

Videos like these are so great! Short and you only say relevant information. I'd say slow it down 10% thought. Adding some pauses in between information helps with retention.

This was basically my understanding of signals and I know a few tricks so I am looking forward to the Advanced course

Gold channel! Can you make a video about (production ratio calculators + production graphs & planning ) ? It seems like the latter is an undiscovered subject on KZfaqs

This tutorial would be usefull earlier, but I already learned everything in here already just from watching your gameplay lol, your work with signals is just too good

Woow I just wached a tutorial that was about things I already knew because I was aware that this channel would be entertaining and to the point.

Hell. Yes. I barely understand what was said, but I needed this.

I watched this a couple months ago but rewatching it everything just kind of made sense. Don’t think I’m gonna be using any advanced circuits in my factory any time soon though

One thing I would like to add, that you glossed over. Connecting the input to the output of a combinator is the most common way to make a simple memory cell. Though they tend be easier to manipulate with single tick signals.

Looking forward to the advanced!

You know what I’m still gonna fall asleep to this vid. Just gonna put it on repeat until I fall asleep hopefully I’ll actually understand circuits by tomorrow 😂

you are an amazing youtuber

I'm convinced this is the best factorio channel in the market today. I'm so sorry Trupen. Still love you.

Good info. Now I know how they work but now I need a how to use. If I could see some practical examples for these I might actually place one

There's a neat trick you can do with the enable/disable of any inserter (yes, even burner inserters, somehow), exactly one arithmetic combinator, and a bunch of chests that you want to fill/drain more or less evenly (like at a train stop), so long as it's only one kind of item you're dealing with (you can probably make it work with any number of items, but I haven't gotten that working yet due to lack of need). Anyways, how to make it do the thing: First step, lay out your train stop with all the chests and inserters, but don't let it have any items yet. Count how many chests there are, and remember which item you're passing thru those chests into or out of the train. Second step, wire all the chests to ONLY ONE color circuit network wire, and send that wire into the input of an arithmetic combinator. Now, set the arithmetic combinator to Divide, with the left signal being the item that's going thru the chests, and the second signal being a constant equal to however many chests you had. This gives you the average number of items in the chest, because an average of more than 2 numbers is just "Add up all the numbers, then divide that by how many different numbers there were", and connecting all the chests to a single color of wire already added together all the items in the chests, and the constant that the arithmetic combinator is using matches the number of "different numbers" aka chests you have. So you have the average number, what do you want to do with it? Well, I usually tell the arithmetic combinator to output the average signal to "Signal A", where A stands for Average, just so that I don't get confused. OK, Step Three, and here's where it can malfunction if you don't wire it up right. First, which inserters are we talking about here: I usually make my train stops with 6 chests and 12 inserters per cargo wagon, with 6 of those inserters linking the 6 chests and the cargo wagon, and the other 6 linking the chests and the belt. For a "standard" 2-4-2 double-headed train (what I usually use, out of habit more than anything), that would be 24 chests and 48 inserters, but if it's a high demand item I'll also do double sided load/unload from that train so it would in that case end up with 48 chests and 96 inserters. In any case, if you always have 2 inseters per chest, we can keep going, I'll tell you how to adjust for more inserters being used all the way at the end, but I have to get the basic concept out of the way first. So, 2 inserters per chest, one moves items between the train's cargo wagon and the chest (or vice versa), and the other one moves items between the in or out belt and the chest (again, direction doesn't really matter yet). I'm talking about the inserters that move items between the belt and chest. Now that that bit of explanation is out of the way, let's start actually building again. You've already got ALL the belts chests and inserters arranged next to a piece of rail to load or unload a train, and you have an arithmetic combinator calculating the average number of items (what you want) in any given chest. That's good, now let's put that number to work. Look at the color of wire that's going into the arithmetic combinator, and use that same color wire to connect up the output of the arithmetic combinator and all the inserters that transfer items from or to the chests to or from the belts (respectively). This feeds the average signal into each combinator, and you should have two SEPARATE wires of the same color now, one adding up all the chests and feeding that number into the combinator, and one coming out of the combinator and feeding the calculated average into the inserters. Now, take a wire of the OTHER color, and connect it between one inserter, and the chest it is interacting with. The idea is for the inserter to have two signals going into it, an A signal carrying the average on one color wire, and the actual chest contents signal on the other color wire. We can't let those two signals mix, so we have to use two different color wires. We also can't let the actual chest contents of any other chests show up on this wire, so we need to make a lot of really short wires that are not connected to each other, with each wire connecting a chest and the inserter that allows items to go to or from a nearby belt. OK, that's SUPER IMPORTANT, so don't get things cross-wired or it'll either act like the circuit wasn't even there, or it'll deadlock. Step 4, setting the conditions on the inserters. This part's a lot easier. All you have to do is compare the contents of the chest to the average, but now the direction the items are going matters, because that determines which comparison you need to use. If you are loading items into the chest from the belt, you should set "Chest contents less than or equal to A (A is the average signal, remember?)". You can't use just plain old "less than", because I've discovered that if everything backs up like you want it to, that will deadlock the inserter (it's just doing what you told it to, even if what you told it to isn't what you meant). If you are taking items OUT of the chest and putting them on the belt, you should set "Chest contents greater than or equal to A (with A again being the signal carrying the average number of items per chest, compared across all the chests)". And again, you can't use just plain old "greater than" or it'll deadlock when things get backed up. In both cases, the default state is "do something even if they're equal", and that's why they don't deadlock when you use the "Less/greater than or equal to" condition. That's all there is to it, unless you made a more complex station that uses more inserters interacting with the belt than there are chests. If you built a "normal" train stop, you can stop here, that's it, you're done, let items go into or out of the chests and watch it automatically balance feeding items into or taking items from the train, all your cargo wagons should be filled or drained at roughly the same time now assuming you have belts feeding chests feeding cargo wagons for all the cargo wagons in that train. But what if you DO have one of those more complicated stations with more inserters than normal? Well, it's not TOO hard to accommodate that, in reality. All you need to do is make sure that all the inserters that can interact with a given chest have an isolated circuit wire that reads the contents of the chest and send that value to the inserter(s) putting items into or taking items out of that individual chest (and on to or off of a belt). So if you have a train stop that has only 2 chests, with 2 inserters feeding items from the cargo wagon into the chests, and from there another 4 inserters feeding items from the chests on to the belts, you should have an isolated circuit network wire connecting a given chest with it's 2 associated inserters that are putting items on the belt. The circuit network conditions on those inserters remain unchanged, it should still work just fine. This would be a lot easier to explain with pictures, or a blueprint, but I think I still managed to get the point across adequately.

Good vid. Surprisingly it only takes a very basic understanding of circuits to make all the sushi you want

Great vid!

Nice, finally a tutorial worth watching. Tough, still not gonna need that information, as I'm not touching signals, but its finally good to know how they operate. ( I may have hundreds of hours in this game 😅)

I have seen you make some truly Beautiful (unholy) creations with circuit networks Thanks for taking the time to spread your cursed knowledge to plebs like myself. Now I just need to wait for the more in-depth vid

The cutoff in the middle of "OK bye" makes me giggle

Impressively done.

Lmao I just finished banging my head over an auto supply train; i figured it out eventually. Looking forward to the in-depth video!

Omg, finally someone explains this thing in here and I understand

Never once even touched these wires in my entire factorio play time, Don't think they'll ever get used in the future either. Generally just considered it research when nothing else is researchable and programming practice for those in the know of how it all works.

You know if you're watching this while high after 15 hours of the tutorial, first game 4 hours in and just about completed the research for circuit network, never even heard of it. This is alot of information to take in but it's great thanks And this is not even the advanced course

Tbh you could do an analisys of your train cramming skills showed both on your Krastorio2 and SeaBlock playthroughs. Anyways, great video! :D

I am very happy Butter Building (and my favorite version of it) is the baclground music

great video, very simple :)

I actually understand them now thank you

Nice and compact love it Didnt even dare to use calculators ect Just started realy playing factory (with space exploration dont know why )20 h in and i only realise 50 iron miners are only starterbase for the starter base for the starter base

So now I can begin to make spectacles of logical horror like Logi-Brain. Thanks Dosh!

I do eagerly await your "advanced" Circuit Network explanation video, hopefully with some worked examples (hopefully you have a better way to make a "trash train" work than my method which uses far too many combinators, I know there's a simpler way but it has eluded me so far).

Great! I can't wait for the advanced tutorial in under 3 minutes! 😅

Accidentally watched this on x1.5 speed without realizing and was blown away by how quickly he was able to explain everything

Great! Thanks for info!❤

Wow, youre right; they really are conceptually simple!

Thank you so very much. I've been trying to play Space Exploration for about 2 months now but I haven't been able to figure out circuts so I can setup automated resupply rockets. Maybe with the advanced one I will finally be able to wrap my head around it.

I enjoy that it ends with a nice and firm, but friendly "Ok"

Thank you so much! Unironically, this and train tutorial gave me more useful info than all of the guides I watched on the same topic. If I may make a small request: I'm a bit confused on a city block design and it's comparison to a main bus. I've looked up some videos, but it's mostly 20 hour series without much explanation on WHY EXACTLY would you make it this way.

Thank you, very concise and great, only one thing left: we need the advanced course

Very nice! thank you!

Great stuff

Just download the game looking forward to more helpful videos. By the way I really enjoy your videos

thank you dosh ♥

He went and did it again, you cant keep getting away with this !

Easiest tutorial of my life (it was so complicated I forgot what game he was playing)

advanced tutorial when?

Thanks Dosh!

getting in early for video three of recommending Mindustry to Dosh. it's mos tof the best of Factorio with a strong tower defense as[ect all wrapped up in an RTS, and it seems like exactly what you wanted from R.U.N.E. 3000 from the the archouse video!

I much rather watch quick and short videos like this 15 times than watch one 30 minute video explaining things.

Advanced course when? Amazing stuff dosh

I dont know why it took this long for the Factorio community to produce an introductory video to circuits that isn’t 10 hours long. Thank you

ah finally, my brother can now understand circuit conditions.

Imma use this

Me watching this with the magic roundabout theme playing in my head: Ah yes now I understand.

I feel like I just skimmed the unix MAN page. Like. Yes, you definitely, technically, told me on the most fundamental level, how to interact with this and how to automate it. But goddamn if my eyes don't glaze halfway through talking about combinators.

Also the most important hint: don't overcomplicate stuff when you do circuits, for the most time there is ingame feature that do the function way better and go to wire only if it's easier to understand.

Thank you!

Ah shit, I need the advanced course

I’ll just stick to driving my 18 wheeler and watching your videos...at the same time naturally...while blindfolded.

I think i saw this one before, but i dont remember when