New to DSP? Your first miner, smelter, and assembler setup - no prior factory game experience required. 5-minute starter factory.

Dyson Sphere Program does not hold your hand. Your first hour can feel overwhelming. Dozens of buildings, multiple resources, and no clear starting point.

Here is the exact 5-step path to get your first automated factory running.

Your First Factory: 5-Step Setup

Step 1: Place Your First Miner

Find iron ore on your starting planet. Open the build menu, select the Mining Machine. Place it directly on an iron ore patch. Connect it to power with a Wind Turbine.

A single mining machine covers 4-6 ore tiles and produces roughly 1 iron ore per second.

Step 2: Feed a Smelter

Place a Smelting Furnace near the miner. Run a conveyor belt from the miner output to the smelter input. The furnace turns 1 iron ore into 1 iron ingot per second. Add a Wind Turbine to power it.

Step 3: Make Your First Component

Place an Assembling Machine Mk.I next to your smelter. Belt iron ingots into it. Open the assembler and select Iron Ingot - Gear, or Circuit Board if copper is nearby.

One assembler makes roughly 1 gear per second. This is your first automated component.

Step 4: Build Storage

Place a Storage Box Mk.I at the end of your assembly line. Belt the finished gears into it. Now you have passive income of gears while you explore the tech tree.

Step 5: Repeat for Essential Components

Your first automation loop should produce at least three things in this order:

• Magnetic Coils (copper + iron) - for belts and sorters
• Circuit Boards (copper + iron) - for almost everything
• Gears (iron) - for belts, sorters, and assemblers

Build each as a mini-line: miner, furnace, assembler, storage box. Three parallel lines, three full boxes after 30 minutes.

Why Most New Players Stall (And How to Avoid It)

The biggest mistake beginners make: trying to build too much at once. A single mining machine feeding a single smelter feeding a single assembler is already automation. You do not need 20 buildings in the first hour.

The 3-building rule: Before placing anything, ask what feeds this. If the answer is I don't know, you are building too fast. Each line should be: Raw Material, Processor, Output. Nothing more.

Scaling Your First Factory

Once gears, coils, and circuits come in automatically, scale up:

• 4 miners on iron (smelt into 8 furnaces, 4 belts of iron ingots)
• 2 miners on copper (smelt into 4 furnaces, 2 belts of copper ingots)
• 1 miner on stone (smelt into bricks for foundations)
• 1 miner on coal (thermal power and future needs)

Get iron and copper stable first. Add belts between furnace banks and a central bus. Components from the bus feed into assemblers.

Quick Reference: First Hour Priority

Once all five are running, you have a self-sustaining starter base.

Community Verification and Resources

• Reddit DSP Starter Discussions
• DSP Wiki: Mining Machine