Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Factories - Automated Production, Conveyor Belts and Industrial Factories for RimWorld

Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Factories is a major industrial automation mod for RimWorld that introduces automated factories, conveyor belts, advanced production management, and large-scale manufacturing. Instead of relying entirely on traditional workbenches and manual hauling, players can establish industrial production lines capable of manufacturing valuable resources and transporting materials between buildings.

The mod expands colony development with automated machinery, configurable production orders, conveyor logistics, and factory overclocking. However, industrial efficiency comes at a cost: large machines consume considerable electricity, occupy significant space, and generate heat that must be managed.

Automated Factories and Mass Production

Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Factories introduces industrial machinery designed to automate resource processing and item manufacturing.

Factories use a familiar production bill interface, making them relatively straightforward to configure for players already familiar with RimWorld's crafting system.

Main production features include:

• Automated manufacturing: Produce items and resources through industrial machinery.
• Production targets: Use commands such as Do until you have X to maintain a desired stock level.
• Continuous production: Select Do forever to keep factories operating without a fixed production limit.
• Factory overclocking: Increase manufacturing speeds by up to 500%.
• Industrial recipes: Manufacture ammunition, medicine, neutroamine, plasteel, and other supported products.
• Production logistics: Connect factories with conveyor systems to automate material transportation.

New factories and their recipes become available through additional research projects.

Conveyor Belts and Automated Logistics

One of the central features of the mod is an advanced conveyor belt system that allows items to move between different parts of a colony without requiring colonists to haul every resource manually.

Conveyor capabilities include:

• Transporting items between production buildings.
• Automatically creating turns, mergers, and splitters based on belt orientation.
• Routing materials through configurable conveyor filters.
• Delivering resources directly to hoppers and shelves.
• Moving items short distances underground.
• Automatically supplying appropriate fuel to compatible buildings.

The conveyor system supports complex production layouts, allowing players to organize separate manufacturing lines and control where different resources are delivered.

Conveyor Filters and Item Sorting

Conveyor splitters can be configured to separate unwanted materials from a production line.

To create a filter:

1. Select a conveyor splitter.
2. Click the Filter button.
3. Choose which items should be excluded from the main conveyor route.
4. The splitter will eject unwanted items through its side outputs.

This allows players to direct different resources toward specific factories or storage locations.

Automatic Refueling and Factory Hoppers

Conveyor belts can also supply fuel to compatible buildings.

When a conveyor ends at a refuelable structure, its final segment automatically becomes a refueling port.

If the conveyor delivers the correct fuel, the connected building is refueled automatically. This system can be used with equipment such as the nuclear ARC generator.

Conveyor belts are optional. Colonists can still manually deliver resources to factory hoppers and collect finished products without using automated logistics.

Overclocking, Electricity and Heat

Factories can operate at increased speeds through a dedicated overclocking system.

Although overclocking improves production rates, it introduces additional management challenges.

Important industrial limitations:

• Large machinery requires considerable construction space.
• Factories consume substantial amounts of electricity.
• Overclocking increases heat generation exponentially.
• Excess heat requires appropriate ventilation or specialized heatsinks.

Players must balance production speed against electricity consumption, thermal conditions, and available space.

Performance and Compatibility

Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Factories uses a specially optimized conveyor implementation designed to reduce its impact on RimWorld's simulation performance.

However, performance costs increase with the number of conveyor belts placed on the map. Large conveyor networks may therefore cause slowdowns, especially in heavily developed colonies.

Compatibility information:

• Existing saves: Supported. New research projects become available after enabling the mod.
• DLC requirements: No DLC is required.
• Biotech and Odyssey: Provide additional factories and recipes when installed.
• Vanilla Expanded mods: Designed to work with other content from the series.
• Other conveyor mods: Compatibility is possible, but not confirmed.
• Rimfeller: No dedicated integration is provided.
• Modded storage buildings: Conveyors can deliver items to supported storage structures from other mods.

Individual factory buildings cannot currently be disabled through the mod settings.

Known Issue - Furniture Disappears After Construction

If newly constructed factory furniture disappears immediately after being built, move Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Factories higher in the mod load order.

Authors

• Oskar Potocki - Artwork and mod design.
• Sarg Bjornson - Programming.
• Taranchuk - Programming.
• Erdelf - Performance optimization.
• Vitalii - Promotional artwork.