With your first line made you're ready to make some cash. Do this by taking orders. My suggestion is to get at least 2 production lines up and running so you have a constant flow of items. Next on the list of things to do would probably be research. I usually get the zipper machine first, then do all of the clothing that it unlocks and then finally, I focus on setting up my other clothing lines while researching different factory pieces. Once you've done all that, you can go where you like. Gunsmith is a game about personal preference (in my opinion), so the only thing left to do is optimize your production times, and compact your factory.

Optimizing allows a couple things. It allows you to avoid resource waste for one thing, and it allows you to also know for certain(-ish) how much of an item you are producing. When optimizing, start at the front of the line, as it allows you to calculate everything you need based on that. Optimizing allows your setup to run efficiently.

Optimizing is the process of fiddling with your machines' times until they are producing at the maximum efficiency as well as cutting out all unnecessary pieces of machinery. The three aspects I look at are: "What machines are bottle-necking(1)?", "Where can this be more efficient?", and "Can it get smaller?" If the answer is yes, then you can optimize.

(1) Bottle-necking is where you have a lot of materials backed up in one machine.

There are some very important things to note before you begin. If you haven't realized it already, items tend to want to push each other off if there are too many on one belt. This can be solved by simply by using an angled conveyor to drop the item on top of one another.

You can minimize the number of machines. While you may find it convenient in the early game to have boxers attached directly to your machine. Using the angled belts, you can stack items on one conveyor to shove into a single boxer.

Splitters are beyond incredible. You can split up your outputs from a single dispenser to go to multiple lines, possibly saving you tons of power and money in the process. Also, doing this frees up so many spaces with your line management.

Conveyors only impact your finances the slightest bit. However... That doesn't mean you should use a bunch of them. If you were unaware already, Gunsmith allows you to put two buildings into each other without having a conveyor in between them. This saves SO much space.

Making your main machines long allows you to line them up next to each other along a production line. This both saves space and increases overall production. The more machines, the higher the output.

CYCLE TIMES!!! If you don't read anything else, read this! In Gunsmith, machines have a slot for output time and crafting time. HOWEVER... These two numbers are not separate. They add together and become the machine's cycle time. This means that if you have a manufacturer that crafts in one second and outputs in one second, the cycle time is 2 seconds. This is a limiting factor so it is important to keep this in mind when tuning times.

Optimizing takes a lot of time, so I think it's at this point that I should mention it. Each day is 3 real life minutes. So keep that in mind when optimizing and the likes.

THE PAUSE BUTTON! I never knew it existed till like halfway through my third play-through. I found it in the settings menu. On any mode other than Gunsmith, you have the ability to pause the game. This is invaluable, as it takes a lot of time to set up production lines. Especially for the first time. You can pause either by pressing P on your keyboard (or whatever you have it set to), or by clicking the pause symbol on top of the clock in the bottom left.

This takes me to me my second to last point. (Yes, it's almost over :) Utilizing the sandbox mode to your advantage. Ok, so the way to do this is to go into the menu and load up a new game. Make sure that before you have loaded up a new world, you have saved your previous world manually into a separate save file. This will make sure you don't lose your world. Then, when you've loaded up the sandbox world, EXPERIMENT!! The sandbox allows you to have unlimited funds and time, which is perfect for perfecting your builds as well as fine tuning them. To use them in your other world, simply press X, select the global folder, and click the button where it says, "Save selection to new blueprint in current folder." Then you should have a blueprint in whatever folder you choose to put it in. You can rename the print whatever you like just by clicking the name.

Finally, here we are, My last point. Mechanics. If you don't want to use a bunch of catwalks, pay attention to this. Mechanics need at least a 1 meter wide path to walk through. 1m is just one tile on the default floor. This is why it is useful to make thin but long production. So that the mechanic can access all the machines.

Ok, you've made it this far, so might as well finish now... To downsize, you want to minimize the number of conveyors in your systems. This means feeding machines directly into each other rather than having conveyors connect them. Also, taking machines out where you can to free up line management.

Timing. Maybe the biggest thing in optimizing your production lines. You will want to start at the beginning, like I mentioned earlier. This allows you to calculate all your other machines. Now, to maximize production, you will want to have your first machine producing at the maximum rate. Then, go to the next machine in the line that has adjustable outputs. You will want to configure that machine to have the maximum output without bottle-necking the parts it's using or creating, or creating a backlog of parts in the machine it producing for. I have some suggestions and perfectly tuned set-ups for my PC, and you may or may not be able to find them in the work shop. I don't know yet. Anyway, you want to repeat the process for each machine in the line production line. Even though there is a way to calculate it based on numbers and hard set times, don't. Because the game is in alpha, the machines are not perfect. I'm not sure if that is accentuated or even caused by my absolute GARBAGE! laptop. This causes the machines to act weird at times and spit out the products either slower or faster than they are supposed to. This means that if you use my machines, you may need to monitor and adjust them accordingly.

So we covered some of the features of Gunsmith, as well as some of the management aspects of the game. It's pretty late at night, so I'm going to go to bed after I put this up. Enjoy and I do hope you find this helpful.s I will also make a second guide (maybe) detailing some of my machine set-ups as well as troubleshooting. :)