Setting up your Oil Tycoon! factory
A factory in Oil Tycoon! earns by mapping input to profit — and the moment anything earns less than it should, the cause is always the same: one stage is slower than the rest.
Setting up the plant
- Start from the sell point backwards. Whatever piles up near the end tells you where the constraint is.
- Place base plates to extend, not to sprawl. A straight line with visible stages beats a maze you cannot diagnose.
- Feed every stage before adding the next one. An input-starved upgrader is a $250 paperweight.
- Add workers once the route is fixed. Workers follow the route; they do not fix it.
The limiting stage method
| Observation | Limiting stage | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| Oil sits in the pit, sell point idle | Input | Well/drill worker |
| Canisters pile before the upgrader | Processing | Upgrader or path extension |
| Fuel piles at the sell point | Output/rate | Bigger container, more droppers |
| Everything moves but money flat | Depth | Add another value step |
Run this check every time income stalls. It is the entire troubleshooting manual.
Balancing workers
Four workers, four jobs — see workers. The rule: each worker should have a full loop of work. If a worker stands idle, the stage before them is the bottleneck, and that is what you buy next.
The second branch: asphalt
Once the main line runs unattended, the asphalt factory becomes worth building — it is a separate product route, not an upgrade to the first one. Details on the asphalt factory page.
The limiting-stage method, step by step
Every factory has one stage limiting the rest. Finding it takes ten seconds and saves thousands:
- Watch the whole route for ten seconds without clicking anything.
- Find the pile. Items queue behind exactly one stage — that is your limit.
- Find the gap just upstream of it. The stage feeding the pile too fast is not the problem; the piled stage is.
- Spend on the piled stage only — widen, upgrade or worker it, then watch again. The pile moves somewhere new; repeat.
If you ever see no pile and no gap, the limit has moved outside the factory: it is volume of oil arriving, which means droppers or the extractor, not the plant.
Balancing workers without over-hiring
Each worker should map to one observed stop, not to one job title. The test: walk away for two minutes, come back, and note the first stage that emptied. That stage gets the next worker. When you come back to a line that is still moving and a balance that is still full, you are done hiring — extra workers past that point are money parked at $670 a head.
The second branch: asphalt, and when it earns
The asphalt branch is a volume answer. It starts paying when the main line no longer stalls, because a branch feeding a congested plant just moves the pile. Concretely: if the limiting-stage method keeps finding the same stage as the limit for three cycles in a row, the main line is saturated — open the asphalt branch. If the limit keeps moving around, the main line still has slack: stay on the core and upgrade value instead.
Layout rules that hold all game
- Extend backwards from the sell point. A plate laid with no route to sale earns nothing.
- Straight before clever. Every corner is a place carriers stall; add corners only when the plot forces them.
- Keep the critical path walkable. You will be debugging this route for hours — a layout you cannot read is a layout you cannot fix.
FAQ
How should I lay out my factory?
Start from the sell point backwards and feed every stage before adding the next one. The limiting stage — the slowest step — decides where your income caps.
How do I balance workers?
Put workers on the stage that stops when you leave, not on the busiest one. If the route is fixed but money is flat, the problem is value, not labour.
