shapez 2 — build guide: platform geometry, belt maths and the order to build in

shapez 2 (tobspr Games, 1.0 released 23 April 2026) is a factory game with no enemies and one demand: mine shapes out of asteroids, cut, rotate, stack, paint and crystallise them, and deliver them to the Vortex in the quantities its milestones ask for. Everything is built on platforms — flat slabs in space with three machine levels — and everything between platforms moves through notches, space belts, space pipes and trains.

This guide is the build side of that: how many machines it takes to keep one belt busy, what a platform chunk actually gives you in buildable tiles, how a notch caps your throughput, and the order the unlocks arrive in. It is written for shapez 2 Update 1.2 (13 August 2026), which as of 2 October 2026 is the live build — 1.2 moved the game to Unity 6 for performance and blueprint migration and published no balance changes to the numbers below. The last update that changed gameplay content was Update 1.1 (25 June 2026, Manufacture Hard Mode).

Every ratio and cost here comes from the game's official wiki, shapez2.wiki.gg, which is generated from the game's own data; its per-machine info boxes carry the same "machines per full belt" figure the game shows you when you select a building. Nothing in the tables is estimated. The one place the wiki's data and its prose disagree is flagged under What could not be verified.

Belt maths: how many machines one belt feeds

A conveyor belt carries 120 shapes per minute at the baseline speed. Every machine has a rated throughput per minute, and the wiki also publishes the resulting ratio — how many of that machine it takes to consume one full belt. That number is what the game prints in the building info box, so you never have to do the division yourself.

Three consequences worth building around:

• Rounds are the whole point. 4 Cutters, 4 Painters, 4 Swappers or 4 Bent Stackers keep one belt moving; a full Stacker row is 6 machines; a Rotator row is 2. The devs' own July 2026 "Troubleshooting your factory" post gives the rule: merge back to one full belt after every different-ratio step before you split again, instead of trying to wire 3 outputs straight into 4 inputs.
• Thin machines are the bottleneck. A Stacker chain at 20/min runs two-thirds the speed of the Cutter feeding it, so a design that is correct at 120/min becomes belt-starved upstream and stalls. Put the slow machine last or parallelise it.
• Trash has no throughput limit and takes a belt on all four sides, so it is the safe sink for a Cutter's unwanted half.

The speed multiplier

The Shop's Speed Multiplier upgrade raises every machine and every belt together, which is why the ratios never change when you buy it. Level 2 (125%) costs 5,000 Research Points and Level 3 (150%) costs 10,000; level 1 (100%) is the free baseline. Belt speed goes 120 → 150 → 180 shapes per minute; the Cutter goes 30 → 37.5 → 45; the Stacker 20 → 25 → 30. Fluid machines scale in step: a Fluid Launcher moves 1200 → 1500 → 1800 L/min, a Painter draws 300 → 375 → 450 L/min.

Fluid maths

The Color Mixer conserves volume: 60 L of each input colour gives 120 L of the result, and it will not output anything unless both inputs are fed. Mixing is done with the game's own table, not with a paint ratio — see the mixing table below.

Platform geometry: what a chunk actually gives you

A platform's cost is Platform Capacity equal to the number of 20×20-tile chunks it covers — a 1×1 costs 1, a 4×2 costs 8. Capacity comes from milestone rewards, from Jobs, and from the Shop's Platform Capacity upgrade (100 → 400 → 800 → 2000 → 5000 → 10k → 50k → 120k → 250k Research Points, for 1,000 → 1,500 → 2,500 → 4,000 → 8,000 → 16k → 50k → 100k → 250k capacity).

The buildable area is not the platform's footprint. Every platform edge is set back two tiles from the chunk border with a further three-tile-wide rim, so the outer ring of every chunk is unusable except for the 4-tile-wide notch in the middle of each edge. Net result:

The first platform decision is the one most players get wrong. For the same 4 capacity you can have four 1×1 platforms (4 × 196 = 784 tiles) or one 2×2 (1,156 tiles) — the single big platform gives about 1.5× the building space, because the unusable rim is paid once instead of four times. Build one large platform per production step and connect the steps, rather than many small ones.

Platform variants are bought, not researched by milestone: Longer Platforms (3×1, 4×1) 1,000 RP, Irregular Platforms 2,200 RP, Blocky Platforms (2×2, 3×2, 4×2) 3,200 RP, 3×3 Platform 9,000 RP — all gated behind Milestone 1. Only the 1×1 and 2×1 arrive free, with the Space Platforms milestone.

By default a platform has two machine levels; the 3rd Machine Level is a 5,000 RP Shop item (also granted by Milestone 8 in the Regular scenario) and it is a prerequisite for the Global Wire Transmitters and Receivers.

The starting Vortex Platform is a permanent 3×3: 54×54 tiles minus the central 20×20 held by the Vortex = 2,516 usable tiles — the same space as one 4×2 platform — with resource patches on all four sides and 12 notches around the perimeter.

Getting shapes and fluid out of asteroids

A Mini-Miner extracts 30/min, so a default 4-point miner produces 120/min = exactly one belt, and a fully boosted 16-point miner produces 480/min = four belts. Boosters must be placed on the asteroid and point at the miner or at the previous booster. Fluid asteroids generate the primary colours (default red, green, blue); secondary and tertiary colours only spawn if you enable them in the map generation settings, and everything else has to be mixed.

Notches, space belts and space pipes

A notch is a 1×4 buildable area, three levels tall, sticking out of a platform edge in the middle of a space chunk. Only launchers, catchers, wireless senders and receivers can be placed on it, and it is the only way shapes, fluids or wire signals leave a platform. Its capacity is the hard limit on everything you build behind it:

Lanes are independent and position-bound: which group of four lanes a shape enters depends on the machine level the launcher sits on, and which lane inside the group depends on the launcher's horizontal position along the notch. Fluids leaving at the output end must be extracted from the same positions they were launched from — you cannot shuffle a lane sideways in transit, only split and merge a lane with itself.

Two habits that follow: keep a full space belt as the default unit (a full space belt feeds four platforms, one notch each, and needs three miners per level group), and use separate space belt layers to carry different shapes instead of mixing them on one belt — sorting is unlocked late and a stray shape on a shared belt jams the line.

Trains cover the same ground differently: rails are free (a rail occupies one chunk and costs zero Platform Units), and car costs are 5 Platform Units for any locomotive, 3 for a Shape Wagon or Fluid Wagon, 1 for a Spacer Wagon. A wagon carries one package per machine level — 3 packages at Train Capacity level 1 — and packages are fixed size. The wiki's worked example is the trap to check before you lay track: at capacity level 1, feeding a loader with four saturated 90/min belts per level fills a 360-item package per level in 60 seconds, so the train's round trip must be under 60 seconds or the network becomes the bottleneck. Fix it by splitting load across more wagons, running more trains on the track, or buying Train Capacity.

The unlock order (Classic — Regular)

Regular inherits the four Operator Badge milestones, so a run has twelve. Shapes are written in the game's own codes: two characters per part, shape letter then colour letter — C circle, R square, S star, W diamond, P pin, c crystal, - empty; u uncoloured, r red, g green, b blue, c cyan, m magenta, y yellow, w white, k black. Layers are separated by : from bottom to top, and each row of shapes below is a chain: each shape delivers into the one after it.

All counts are at the Normal difficulty multiplier (100%) and free copy/paste with a 100% platform limit. On Relaxed the goals are 60% and copy/paste is free; on Challenge they are 150%, copy/paste costs Blueprint Points, and platform capacity is capped at 80%. Blueprint-Point and Platform-Unit rewards are only granted if the difficulty actually charges you for copy/paste and limits capacity — under Normal, which is free and unlimited, those rows pay nothing.

Note the shape of the curve: milestones 1–2 are counts of ten and hundreds, milestone 4 jumps to 1,200–8,000, and by milestone 11 the final deliverable is 150,000 of a four-layer shape. That is why the milestone order matters more than the shape order — each milestone's throughput requirement is roughly an order of magnitude above the last, so the factory you had at milestone 5 cannot be stretched to milestone 9; plan each new milestone as a new platform build, fed from its own miners.

What to buy from the Shop, and in what order

Research Points come from milestones and from Jobs (each Classic scenario has its own Job chain). Unlockable Shop items, with their Regular-scenario milestone gate:

Upgrade ladders, cheapest first: Vortex Inputs 700 / 1,000 / 1,500 / 4,000 RP takes the number of belts you can feed the Vortex from 4 to 6, 8, 10 and finally 12; Platform Capacity runs 100 RP to 250,000 RP across ten levels; Speed Multiplier 5,000 then 10,000; Train Speed 800 / 1,200 / 3,000 for 140% / 180% / 200%; Train Capacity 800 / 1,200 / 1,800 / 3,000 / 5,000 for 2 to 6 packages per wagon per level. The Shape Multiplier is the endgame sink — 35k, 75k, 125k, 175k, 350k, 400k, 450k, 500k, 550k, 600k and 999,900 RP for multipliers 2 through 12. It is handed out as the Final Qualification milestone's upgrade and is what makes the 150,000-shape final delivery finite.

Colour mixing table

The full 9×9 result table (R red, G green, B blue, C cyan, M magenta, Y yellow, W white, K black, U uncoloured). Input order does not matter.

Read the shortcuts off it: red + magenta or yellow is red again; white + any colour makes that colour (so white is the duplicator); white + white makes black; white + black makes uncoloured. Blue + red = magenta, green + blue = cyan, red + green = yellow.

The traps that cost the first ten hours

1. The notch is the ceiling. One notch carries 12 belts. No amount of machines behind a platform edge will push more through it, and a full space belt covers exactly four notches — one per platform.
2. Small platforms waste capacity. Four 1×1 platforms give 784 buildable tiles; one 2×2 for the same 4 capacity gives 1,156. The rim you never build on is paid for every chunk you add.
3. Lane positions are fixed in space belts. A shape enters a specific lane based on the launcher's machine level and its horizontal position on the notch, and must come out at the matching position. Build with the assumption that a lane is a belt that cannot change lanes.
4. Launchers auto-aim at the furthest catcher. Belt Launcher/Catcher and Train Launcher/Catcher pairs must be 1 to 4 tiles apart; when several launchers could reach one catcher, the game picks the one furthest away. Long launcher rows built by drag-and-drop look right and connect wrong.
5. The Vortex starts with 4 belt inputs. You have twelve ports per side physically, but only four are active when a new game begins — the 3rd Machine Level item adds ports and the Vortex Inputs upgrade takes the belt count from 4 to 12. Buy the early Vortex Inputs levels (700–1,500 RP) before you scale delivery, or the delivery line will sit idle behind four belts.
6. Crystals shatter. Cutting through two connected crystal parts shatters every connected crystal; the same happens when a Stacker drops a layer containing crystals, and the Crystal Generator fills gaps and pins only up to the highest used layer in the input shape. A Swapper is the one way to combine two halves without the drop that shatters them.
7. The Stacker discards layers. Anything above the layer limit — 4 layers, 5 in Insane — is thrown away, which is also how you deliberately make standalone pins.
8. The Painter only paints the top layer, and only plain shape parts; pins, crystals and the refined X/Y shapes pass through unpainted.
9. A loader deletes a partly filled package when it is offered a different item — and a different rotation of the same shape counts as different. Never let two rotations meet at one loader.
10. Trash only builds on the first machine level, so a disposal line cannot be run up to level 2 with everything else.
11. Two ratios meeting is where factories stall. The devs' rule is to merge back to one full belt between stages with different machine counts, then re-split — and never mix different shapes on one belt before sorting exists.
12. Crystal, Painter and fluid machines are the jump in complexity. Milestone 4 introduces fluids, milestone 7 the Color Mixer and milestone 9 crystals, and each of those three multiplies the number of machines per belt you were previously comfortable with — the fluid launcher you need is 1,200 L/min, but the Painter swallowing it eats holes in a build fast at 300 L/min each.

Sources

Game version: shapez 2 Update 1.2, released 13 August 2026, current as of 2 October 2026 — read from the Steam news API (https://api.steampowered.com/ISteamNews/GetNewsForApp/v2/?appid=2162800; "shapez 2 - Update 1.2, Screenshot Contest & Puzzles Dev Update"), plus "Update 1.1 + Hyper Skin DLC are available now!" (25 June 2026) and the store API for app 2162800 (1.0 release date 23 April 2026; developer tobspr Games). Update 1.2 is Unity 6, performance, mod support and blueprint migration; it announces no balance changes, so the 1.0/1.1 figures below are the live ones.

Official wiki, shapez2.wiki.gg (read as raw wikitext through api.php?action=parse&prop=wikitext, and the Milestones page as rendered HTML because its tables are template-generated):

• Milestones (full milestone tables for Operator Badge, Regular, Hard, Insane and Hexagonal — shape chains, counts and rewards)
• Machine Platforms, Space Platforms, Foundation, Vortex (platform areas, capacity costs, notch rules, Vortex ports and perimeter)
• Conveyor Belt, Cutter (Cutter, Swapper, Half Destroyer), Rotator, Stacker, Painter, Pin Pusher, Trash, Crystal Generator, Mini-Miner (footprints, throughput, machines-per-belt ratios)
• Pipe, Fluid Machines, Fluid Tank, Color Mixer, Fluids (fluid rates and the mixing tables)
• Asteroid Miner, Asteroid Pump, Map (extraction points, boosters, buildable areas, asteroid generation)
• Space Transport (space belt and space pipe lane capacities and costs), Trains (rails, stations, wagon costs, capacity maths)
• Shop (every unlockable item and upgrade cost, and the speed/capacity ladders)
• Blueprints, Codex, Glossary, Jobs, Operator Level, Game Modes (difficulty settings and scenario list)

Developer post: "shapez 2 - Troubleshooting your factory", Steam announcement, 9 July 2026 — the full-belt build rule, one-space-belt-feeds-four-platforms, the info box as a ratio source, keeping full space belts, and the belt-clearing tip.

What could not be verified

• Two of the five throughput values the wiki publishes per machine are unexplained. Each building's wiki info box lists five speeds spanning 50%–150% of the baseline — for a belt, 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 per minute. Only three of those are documented anywhere in the game's own upgrade tables: the baseline (120 for a belt, level 1 of Speed Multiplier) and the purchasable 125% and 150%. The 60 and 90 figures appear only in the wiki's data-derived info boxes, with no corresponding unlock listed; the guide above uses the baseline and the two purchasable tiers only. Every "machines per full belt" ratio is computed from the baseline, and those match the wiki's own ratio field and the in-game info box, so they are independent of this gap.
• The dev post's miner count for space belts contradicts the wiki. The July 2026 post says three asteroid miners per space belt layer and twelve per space belt; the Space Transport page's data says four fully boosted miners per level and twelve for all three levels combined. The guide uses the wiki's figures; the launcher-side statement in the post (one space belt feeds four platforms, one notch each) agrees with the wiki.
• The wiki calls its platform budget both "Platform Capacity" and "Platform Units" (milestone rewards and train cars are written as Platform Units; platform costs and the Shop upgrade are written as Platform Capacity). The guide keeps each page's own wording rather than asserting they are one currency.
• The wiki's per-building info boxes and its Shop table disagree about milestone gates. The building pages carry a single milestone= field (Cutter 1, Trash 1, Fluid Tank 4, Crystal Generator 8) while the Shop page's own "Milestone Required" column, which is explicitly written for Classic-Regular, gives different numbers (Cutter 0, Trash 0, Fluid Tank 1), and the milestone tables in this guide put the Crystal Generator at Regular #9 "Crystals" and the Fluid Tank at #4 "Fluids & Painting". The guide follows the milestone tables for what unlocks what and the Shop for Research Point prices; the building-page field is ignored because it does not reconcile.
• Hard, Insane and Hexagonal differ in the details — different shape chains, different reward multipliers (625 / 750 per milestone row instead of 500 for the Platform Unit rewards), Hexagonal delivers 6-part layers, and Insane allows 5-layer shapes and has a No Straight Stacker challenge on by default. Only the Regular chains are tabulated here. The wiki's Changelog page also still ends at 1.1.0 (25 June 2026) and has not been updated for 1.2, so what changed inside 1.2 beyond the engine and blueprint migration is not documented anywhere I could read.