The Crust the Crust Game Automation — Wiki & Guide

Automation is the heart of The Crust: you mine regolith and metals underground, refine them through production chains, and keep everything moving with conveyor belts and drones across two factory layers — the open lunar surface and the tighter underground. The community's verdict on the loop is warm ("The underground conveyors I absolutely love the implementation of"; "one of my favorite automation games"), with the caveat that you'll be rebalancing layouts every few tech unlocks.

Conveyor belts: five tiers plus underground

Tier	Speed	Build cost
1	60 items/min	250
2	150 items/min	750
3	300 items/min	1,750
4	450 items/min	3,750
5	600 items/min	7,750
Underground	As input	3,000 × 2 ends

All belt research sits in the Engineering branch (Conveyor Mk.1 → Mk.2, Underground Conveyor Mk1, then Underground Conveyor II–IV for longer point-to-point tunnels). Two quality-of-life researches matter: Full recycling of conveyors and wires refunds 100% of build cost on deconstruct, and the Programmable Splitter enables filtered splitting (listed as work-in-progress on the wiki page — check it in-game before planning around it).

Belt handling rules that save hours (from the community forum):

• Drag a belt sideways into another and a merger is built automatically; drag sideways off a belt for a splitter.
• T flips a building's input/output sides — the fastest fix for reversed-belt mistakes ("20 minutes working out why nothing is bloody working, only to realize my conveyor belts are going the wrong way" — LT Gaming).
• Underground belts are strictly point-to-point — you cannot chain two underground segments to each other.
• Bulk storage accepts belt connections; general storage does not — feed machines from bulk/large storage, not the small containers.

Drones: your three-type workforce

Type	How you get it	Can do	Carry
Standard	Starting workforce (8–12 in sandbox depending on difficulty)	Construct and repair buildings, haul items	1
Mining	Drone Reconfiguration Module	Mine regolith (and basalt after research); cannot carry or construct	—
Hauling	Hauling Drone Reconfigurator	Haul only — no construction	10 base, up to 20 with research

All three come from the Fundamental branch's research line: Hauling Drone, Drone Upgrade – Oxide mining rate, Excavation Speed I/II, and +50% basalt excavation speed. Practical staffing, per creator runs: split your fleet — roughly half mining, half standard for construction/hauling — and convert a couple more to hauling once contracts demand big shipments. Idle drones are wasted drones: assign cleanup with the three-chevron priority tool (orange high, green low).

The two-layer factory

• Underground = mining and refining. Extractors sit on veins (placement requires 9/9 coverage), regolith refineries shake raw material free (slag is the byproduct), smelters and rolling mills turn ore into steel, titanium and plates. Hard Rock Drilling unlocks the red undiggable tiles.
• Surface = power, gases and logistics. Gas extractors tap argon and neon; solar arrays and batteries live here; landing platforms and launch infrastructure ship goods to Earth. As Pravus puts it: "gases are on the surface of the moon, metals and stuff are under the moon."
• The elevator is the chokepoint — everything crossing layers rides it, so keep its belt and power links clean.

Power is an automation problem too

The Moon's cycle gives roughly two weeks of daylight followed by two weeks of night (community-measured), so power is a production-chain input like any other: solar arrays recharge banks of batteries by day and the batteries carry the night. Baseline for the early base: 12–15 small solar arrays and 9+ small batteries, then scale. Every structure also consumes CPU capacity (an in-game computer budget, not your PC) — denser, higher-tech buildings do more per CPU, which is why upgrades beat spamming small units. CPU is also how the drone fleet is limited: more drones need more CPU headroom and charging stations.

How deep does the rabbit hole go?

Lighter than Factorio, by design. Comparing notes across forums and reviews: players who bounced off Dyson Sphere Program's spray-upgrades or Satisfactory's late-game spreads describe The Crust's complexity as the level they actually enjoy, while Factorio veterans note it lacks that game's scale — the differentiating layer is the economy: every chain ultimately feeds Earth contracts, market prices and faction reputation. When belts stall anyway, the troubleshooting basics cover the three causes that account for most stalls.