Bus: long line of parallel belts to carry basic materials through factory.

Assemblers give bonus products. Same resources, but 2x the output of hand crafting.

Make inserters and belts from assemblers to always have them when building expansions.

Secrets can be found by checking the map for structures that appear but you did not build.

Secrets sometimes have blueprints to scan or pre-made useful goods.

Clogging empty slots of boxes with rocks to control how many stacks an assembler will output.

Nilaus didn't like branching resources out of a bus; though later found out to do it by leaving an object on the ground so the belt will ascend vertically which allows installing a splitter to pull from it.

Plants grow slowly.

Filter inserters are as fast as a fast inserter--but consume more electricity.

Threshers have clearance requirements that are greater than other machines in the game. Which prevents direct-to-box extraction.

Paving over the terrain is one way to get a lot of usable build space

You can stack busses up vertically--though unpacking them can be a challenge.

Game needs a tool to upgrade belts in-place.

1 water wheel = 2 crank generators. Wheels create potential and cranks convert potential to energy.

Splitters and mergers come out of T-junctions on their own; you don't build them like in other factory games.

Questions

Why build a bus?

What is the penalty of hand crafting?

How do you find secrets?

Why do we care about secrets?