Voxel Tycoon — build guide: recipe ratios, machine counts and the order to build them

Voxel Tycoon is an Early Access tycoon game about hauling freight, building factories and mining in infinite voxel terrain. Mines feed factories over conveyor belts, factories hand goods to road and rail stations, and cities pay for whatever your vehicles unload there. It entered Steam Early Access with 0.85 on 15 April 2021 and is developed and published by the studio Voxel Tycoon.

Version this guide was written for: 0.89 (released 6 April 2025), the newest released update as of 3 October 2026. The Rails and Roads Rework ("RRR") shown in the December 2025 and July 2026 devlogs is not released — the developers' 4 July 2026 post says a first beta will go out once the new construction system is minimally playable, and that the current version is already very playable.

Two caveats, stated up front:

• 0.89 rebuilt vehicles. It added a wear and reliability system, added trucks to every generation, "rebalanced all vehicles", and changed higher-tier vehicles so they are no longer locked behind Depot II/Garage II (the 0.89 notes name Depot II; tier II buildings now cut maintenance costs instead). The wiki's vehicle tables were written for the 0.85–0.88 era. Treat the vehicle price/speed columns below as directionally right, not exact.
• The wiki is not internally consistent in places. Where two pages disagree, this guide prints the disagreement rather than picking a winner. Every number below came from a wiki page, the wiki's raw wikitext or the developer's own changelog — nothing is estimated.

The three numbers everything else follows from

Consequences worth internalising before you lay a single belt:

• Exactly 5 mines fill one belt (5 × 0.25 = 1.25). Not four, not six.
• Every warehouse loads faster than a belt can carry away, so the belt, not the warehouse, is the limit (1.25 items/s).
• Mines can load straight into a Warehouse inside their sphere of influence, with no conveyor at all; Connectors are the other way to get items out.

Every vanilla recipe, with its cycle and output rate

The wiki's Recipes page is generated from a community extraction of the game's own data, so it is the table to trust (the Alloy smelter, Circular saw, Crusher, Press, Carpentry, Concrete mixer, Glass furnace and Electronics assembler pages agree with it). "Cycle" is the time for the whole batch, not per item.

Wiki inconsistency to know about: the Glass furnace page names its 3-per-cycle output Glass Frame, while the Recipes table and the cargo list both call the item Glass pane. Same item, and the furnace page carries no cycle time at all — the 5 s comes from the Recipes table.

The ratios that actually shape a build:

• Coal is the smelter tax. Every 5 ore costs 1 coal (iron and copper); steel costs 1 coal per 2 iron bars; glass costs 1 coal per 3 sand. Coal demand in the midgame scales with ore throughput, not with your factory count.
• Bars become parts at 2:1, except steel beam at 1:1. 1 iron bar → 2 iron parts or 2 iron plates; 1 copper bar → 2 copper wire; 1 steel bar → 1 steel beam.
• Wood is the only input that doubles. 1 wood → 2 planks in 6 s, or 1 beam in 6 s.
• Glass tube is the one recipe that nearly fills a belt by itself — 6 tubes per 5 s is 1.20 items/s against a 1.25 items/s belt. One glass furnace on tubes, on its own belt, is done.
• Everything from the Press, Carpentry, Glass furnace, Concrete mixer and Electronics assembler runs on a 5 s cycle, taking 0.2 items/s per input slot. A single belt can feed several of those factories at once.

What one finished good costs in ore

Derived from the recipe table above, walking the chain back to raw materials. Useful for sizing a mine, or for deciding whether a new factory is worth the belt.

How the TV column is built (each step uses the recipe table):

• 1 advanced wood frame = 1 wood frame + 1 glass pane
• 1 wood frame = 2 wood plank + 1 iron parts = 1 wood + half an iron bar = 1 wood + 0.5 iron ore + 0.1 coal
• 1 glass pane = 1 sand + one third of a coal
• 1 circuit = 1 iron plate + 1 vacuum tube = (0.5 iron bar) + (0.5 sand + one sixth of a coal) + (0.5 copper bar) = 0.5 iron ore + 0.5 sand + 0.5 copper ore + 0.37 coal
• a TV takes 2 circuits, so the circuit line doubles

So a single TV is: 1 wood, 1.5 iron ore (three fifths of an iron bar), 1 copper ore, 2 sand and about 1.17 coal. Radio is the cheap early electronic: 1 wood, 1 iron ore, 0.5 copper ore, 0.5 sand, 0.47 coal. Note that the recipes consume ores and bars as whole items — the fractions are what the chain averages out to, which is what matters when sizing mines and belts.

How many machines to fill a belt

The Alloy smelter page states these directly, and they match the recipe rates:

Merging belts without leaving gaps is the one genuinely fiddly bit, and the Conveyor page spells out the rule: at the last merge before a full belt, each input belt must already carry at least its share — 0.625 items/s for a two-into-one merge. Since mines produce 0.25 items/s, a clean five-mine belt is two connectors on two mines into one input belt, two connectors on two more mines into the other, and two connectors on the fifth mine, split one onto each belt. Merging the fifth mine in a single lane instead leaves the output belt with gaps forever.

What everything costs and how big it is

Dimensions are width × length × height in tiles. Prices are base prices on normal difficulty with inflation off — inflation is a real setting and it raises both buildings and research as the game runs.

Mining facilities (all produce 0.25 items/s):

Factories:

Logistics and research:

Rail station sizing: a station is placed 1 platform wide and 80 m long by default, up to 8 platforms and 250 m total. While placing, B and V change the platform count, C and X change the length, R rotates. The tutorial line uses 60 m stations. The Station page gives default dimensions of 4 wide × 18 long (65 m), which does not match the 80 m default in the Basic Rail Network Tutorial — both are printed here rather than reconciled.

Research: the ladder and the order

Researching is tiered, and the tier sets the base cost, duration and number of items. Costs rise with inflation as the game runs. Researches need their listed items physically delivered to the Laboratory, so match what you pipe and haul to the lab to what your next tech needs.

Free from the start (no cost, no items): Research and Development (tier 0), which itself unlocks the branches Manufacturing, Rails, Roads, Mining, Researching, Storages and Steam engine; plus Signals, Railcars, Gasoline engine, Rails, Roads, Mining, Researching and Storages are all marked as unlocked by default.

The tier ladder, with an example research at each tier:

The chain that ends the game runs Manufacturing → Wood processing / Iron smelting → Manufacturing II → Metal fabrication + Glass production + Copper smelting → Manufacturing III → Electronics production → Electronics production II → Electronic devices production (radio and TV) → Computing devices, which wants 5,850 circuits, 4,500 copper wire, 3,600 TV and 2,250 radio over 450 days. That is the production target to build backwards from: circuits and TVs are the goods that decide how big the electronics line has to be, and both of them pull iron plates, vacuum tubes, glass and wood frames.

Practical ordering notes:

• Nothing in the tier-1/2 set is wasted. Iron smelting (alloy smelter) and Wood processing (circular saw) come before anything you would otherwise build with them, and Stone processing (crusher) feeds concrete later.
• Signals II is cheap in tier 3 and unlocks the real pre-signal; Signals (semaphores, pre-semaphores) is free, so early rail is never blocked on research.
• Rails II unlocks Depot II, Freight Station II, Passenger Station II and the beam bridge. Under 0.89 the tier II garages and depots buy lower maintenance rather than gating vehicles, so research them for the maintenance discount, not for unlocks.
• Laboratory II (Researching II, tier 5) raises research efficiency from 100% to 150%. Multi-lab setups are the standard way to run several researches without waiting serially.

Road or rail first

The wiki is blunt about it: trucks are the cheapest way to start and need almost no infrastructure; rail is more expensive and needs planning, and it is not recommended to open a game with a rail line. The train tutorial adds that rail infrastructure costs more than a road, and that the early demand is not profitable enough to need trains.

Early road numbers:

Early rail numbers (one locomotive plus wagons; the Locomotives page lists 27 locomotives, of which the steam set is Rails research level I):

A basic rail line therefore costs a depot (34,500), two freight stations (23,400 each), the rails between them, a locomotive (85,500+) and wagons (10,575+ each) before it moves anything — against 24,500 for a garage, 21,500 per road freight station and 26,575 for a truck. That is why the first route in the tutorials is a coal or wood truck run.

Laying out the first route

Where to put a station. Income depends on the business's demand and on how close the station is to it. The truck tutorial is explicit: a percentage appears above the business showing profitability based on the distance from the station, and the destination station should be placed as close to the demanding business as possible. The Basic Rail Network Tutorial says the same thing for rail — "close enough to receive 100% profit". What does not matter is the haul distance between the two stations: income is based on demand from the business, so a long haul earns no more than a short one. Haul long distances only when the resource is only there.

Mines and stations. A mine must be placed on a deposit (it only needs to be within the deposit's radius, not centred). A station must have the mine or factory inside its influence radius. Mining facilities can load directly into a Warehouse inside their sphere of influence; factories cannot be reached by vehicles at all — conveyors are the only way in or out of a factory.

Road layout. Build a loop at the loading station so trucks can turn around, and place the depot next to the resource. Beware the loading side: if the depot is on the same side the trucks load from, every truck has to turn around, which is why the loop matters. There can be no road junctions at a truck loading station — the station's own road stub has to join a plain road.

Rail layout. Build the station parallel to the industry so it can be extended later, keep the train no longer than the station (loading and unloading take longer when a consist is much longer than the station), and build a loop at the station end if trains are not allowed to reverse — otherwise the train runs backwards at reduced speed. Plan with the camera zoomed out, avoid slopes, prefer wide curves, and put the depot's exit facing the station entrance so released trains have a direct path. Where two trains share a single line, add a passing loop at least as long as the longest train, and wire the junctions so a pre-signal sits before the junction and a regular signal at its exit.

Orders and vehicle management. Schedules use LOAD/FULL LOAD and UNLOAD/FULL UNLOAD stops; a route name makes it possible to add another vehicle to the same route from a dropdown ("Individual Route") instead of re-entering the stops. The copy tool in the depot or garage duplicates a vehicle with its route (hold Shift to buy several), which is the fastest way to scale a proven line. One truck can serve two cargoes on one route by adding a Refit order between the two halves, and the back-and-forth mode toggle is in the vehicle window.

Signals and blocks

A block is the stretch of connected rail between signals or the end of the track. Only one train is in a block at a time, and rails without signals are a single block — a one-block railway supports exactly one train, which is why the second train in the Signal 101 guide never leaves the depot. The rule to build by: always more blocks than trains.

• Signals are directional. A signal on one side of a track makes the track one-way; signals on both sides make it two-way. One-way double track is the normal late-game layout; two-way single track is the cheap early-game layout.
• Put a pre-signal on the entry to an intersection and a regular signal on each exit. On its own, entry signals caused a deadlock in the Signal 101 worked example; replacing the entry signals with pre-signals fixed it, because the pre-signal will not let a train into an intersection it cannot leave.
• A pre-signal shows green when every possible path is free, yellow when at least one is blocked and one is open, red when all are blocked. If the train does not need to pass all the way through a chain and there is no eventual exit, it will not go.
• Substituting a pre-signal for that last exit signal is a mistake: a train will not pass a red pre-signal even when its own path is clear (a documented difference from OpenTTD's path signals and Factorio's chain signals).
• Since 0.89 the regular signal is the default placement tool (previously the pre-signal was), and since 0.88.6 the signal spacing setting measures clear space between signals so a whole train length can fit inside a block.

Traps that waste the first ten hours

These come from the wiki's "Common mistakes and tips" guide — which is also mirrored on Steam as the community guide linked from that page (the Steam copy returned HTTP 429 when checked, so its content here is the wiki's copy) — plus the FAQ and Pro Tips pages.

• Station roads that fail to join are invisible income. A station comes with its own road stub; if it does not connect to your network, vehicles cannot find their destination and simply stop earning. Check every station's connection as a matter of routine.
• Roads that will not meet side by side. Build up close to the road you want to join and make a slight turn into it, or bulldoze a tile or two and re-lay. The cause is the road grid lining up badly, and no amount of clicking fixes it.
• No level crossings exist in 0.89. Use bridges or tunnels: press T for a tunnel, B for a bridge, Z and X to change depth or height, N to change bridge type once you have researched more. Bridges and tunnels cannot turn, and cannot be merged or split while on the bridge or in the tunnel — and 0.89's own devlog still lists level crossings as something the cancelled-then-reworked road system will eventually bring.
• Businesses cannot use your warehouses. A warehouse's contents are never sold by an AI business, and a station will not sell from a warehouse. Selling happens only when a vehicle unloads the requested goods at a station whose influence reaches the business — this is the single most common reason a first logistics chain earns nothing.
• Conveyors cannot sell. Belts move items between mines, factories and warehouses; they never make a sale. Sales need a vehicle unload at a station.
• The logistics tab can be switched off. A station's link to a nearby store has per-building toggles in its Logistics tab. That tab is also where you see all connected buildings as coloured lines; if the lines stop moving, there is no output. A common beginner mistake is disabling "sell to store" and then wondering why trucks unload nothing.
• Conveyor colour code. Blue connector is input, orange is output, and on a filter the selected item leaves by the green gate while the rejects leave by the orange one. If a warehouse is pulling items out instead of taking them in, the Flip Conveyors tool swaps the colours and fixes it.
• Long trains on short stations. Loading and unloading take longer when the consist is much longer than the platform, and a too-long train fouls the junctions it is standing across. Build stations longer than your longest train; the maximum is 250 m.
• A deadlock is usually a chain of blocks with no slack. If a train waits forever at a signal, check that the block ahead of it does not loop back into the block behind it, and that there is room after every exit signal for the train that has to clear the intersection.
• Over-supplying a city cuts your returns. Excess supply lowers prices and demand for that good; cities grow when all their businesses are well supplied, shrink when they are not, and an under-supplied business can go bankrupt (you can bail an enterprise out directly to save it).
• Vehicles wear out in 0.89. Wear degrades performance; you can set service intervals, add depot tasks to schedules, and configure replacement at a chosen wear level — including self-replacement, so old vehicles replace themselves. Budget maintenance as a running cost, not a one-off.
• Research is a logistics problem, not a money problem. Each research needs its items delivered to a laboratory. Stock the lab with the goods the next tech on your list demands, or you will fund research that never starts.

Sources

• https://voxeltycoon.fandom.com/api.php — raw wikitext for: Recipes, Researching, Buildings, Mining Facilities, Natural resources, Cargo, Conveyor, Signals, Block, Waypoint, Depot, Station, Warehouse, Garage, Laboratory, Freight station, Coal mine, Iron mine, Copper mine, Sand quarry, Sawmill, Alloy smelter, Circular saw, Crusher, Press, Carpentry, Glass furnace, Concrete mixer, Electronics assembler, Trucks, Semi-trailers, Locomotives, Railcars, Buses, Vehicles, Currencies, FAQ, Pro Tips, Blocks, How to play: Common mistakes and tips, How to play: Your first truck route, How to play: Your first train route, How to play: Signals 101, Basic Rail Network Tutorial
• https://voxeltycoon.fandom.com/wiki/Special:AllPages (page enumeration; the rendered Special:AllPages URL itself is blocked to fetching, the API listing is not)
• https://voxeltycoon.xyz/changelog (0.89 patch notes, Wear and Tear Update, 0.85 Steam Early Access release; used for the version and the 0.89 vehicle/garage/depot changes)
• https://voxeltycoon.xyz/devlog and https://voxeltycoon.xyz/devlog/rrr-closing-the-gaps/ (development status of the Rails and Roads Rework)
• https://steamcommunity.com/app/732050/guides (queue source; guides hub)
• https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2458451176 (the "Common mistakes and tips" guide mirrored on Steam; returned HTTP 429 when checked, content taken from the wiki copy)

Game version: Voxel Tycoon 0.89 (6 April 2025), the newest released update as of 3 October 2026. Vehicle price and speed figures come from wiki tables that predate the 0.89 vehicle rebalance and are marked as such. Nothing in this guide is estimated: every figure is from one of the pages above, and the two internal wiki disagreements found (glass pane naming, rail station default length) are printed rather than resolved.