Big Ambitions Factory Guide

The four people a factory needs

None of them stand at a machine by choice; each one closes a gap that will otherwise stall the building.

• A purchasing agent at headquarters. Import contracts are set up by an agent, and each agent can be assigned to one importer at a time. Making cupcakes and beer means two agents: the sugar and milk come from Lunar Tide, the barley and hops from Aquatic Bay.
• Factory workers on the floor. Since the 0.10 overhaul their skill level changes how fast the line runs — Hovgaard’s words were that worker skill “now has a noticeable impact on production”.
• A logistics manager who sits at the factory but is assigned to a desk in your headquarters. Without that HQ desk the deliveries do not get scheduled.
• A delivery driver with at least 50% skill, because factory freight moves in a freight truck and a low-skill driver cannot take one out.

Importing raw material

Importers work on contracts, not shopping trips. Once a contract exists you choose between a one-time delivery and a repeating one, and the two treat the quantity field differently:

• One-time tries to deliver the amount you typed.
• Repeating treats the number as a target stock level. If you set 500 and the factory holds 200, the next delivery brings 300. This is the mode a running line wants.

Every importer has a minimum purchase; an order under it simply does not ship. Deliveries land at midnight and go onto pallet shelves, so a factory with no pallet shelves receives nothing.

Two facts about the piers worth knowing before you sign anything. The importers specialise — the wiki’s own summary is Lunar Tide for food, Maritime Freight Line for electronics and jewellery, Aquatic Bay for liquor — and the item finder lists what each one carries. And since 1.0, exporting moves the import index: sell too much of a product abroad and its import and export price drops for the rest of that week. Overproducing is now visible on the invoice.

What the 0.10 overhaul changed

Factories were rebuilt in Early Access 0.10, in March 2026, and the announcement is specific about what changed. Layouts no longer let belts block walkways; workers stop walking back and forth; lines no longer hoard every ingredient in one input station; production speeds went up; worker skill started to matter; and, in Hovgaard’s words, “every product can be produced by factories”.

That last line matters for the table below. The community’s recipe pages were written before the overhaul, for 0.9. The chains they describe — which machine, fed by which ingredients — are the structure the planner works from, and the lines below are the ones the wiki has fully mapped. Products that became factory-producible in 0.10 without a wiki recipe are not in it yet.

Every product line the community has mapped

Grouped by the machine that finishes the product. Click through to the planner for the machine count and shopping list.

Related

• Factory planner — machines, ratios and the shopping list for any line above
• Item finder — where the Factory Supply Depot and the seven importers are
• Blueprints — warehouse layouts (H, I, P and Q buildings) other players have saved