Workstation

Workstations are objects placed in a factory to produce products to sell. The workstations the player owns determines what the factory can produce.

Workbenches
Workbenches are simple and relatively cheap workstations. They are suitable for small factories or new production lines because of their versatility but they are also way less efficient than proper machines and more expensive workstations. As the factory grows, the player should avoid having too many of these.

Machinery
Light and heavy machinery usually have one or just a few types of operations that they can perform, but they are a lot more efficient than workbenches.

Workstation queue
Each workstation has a queue of jobs associated with it, sorted with the upcoming job at the top and then all following jobs in a descending order.

Hovering the pointer over a job allows the following:
 * Split: Split one job into two jobs.
 * Move: Allows the moving of a job to another workstation within the factory.
 * Send Back: This demotes a job and sends it to the bottom of the workstation queue.

To change the position of a job within a queue, simply click and drag it to the desired location.

Overdrive
Overdrive is used for those moments when a particular workstation needs to be pushed to its limits. Overdrive causes a workstation to operate with an extra +50% efficiency, but it also doubles the rate at which it wears down and will require maintenance.

Service and maintenance
Each workstation will deteriorate over time and requires frequent service. If machines aren't kept well serviced, their efficiency will gradually deteriorate and eventually slow down to painfully slow speeds.

To service a workstation, open up the workstation's context menu and click on the service button. As soon as an operator is free, they will move to the machine and take care of the issue.

If there are many machines to service at the same time, hold left control and click on each machine that needs to be serviced directly in the 3D view.

Workstation goes boom!
Due to unfortunate (and usually random) events, players may find themselves owning a blackened and smoking pile of rubble where one of the workstations used to be. If a workstation explodes, regardless of the reason, it will need to be repaired before any work may continue.

Note that any queued work can always be moved from a broken workstation to another. Consider this a quick solution if something needs to be finished before the workstation can be repaired.

Billboards


Billboards can be used to control and distribute work between multiple workstations of the same type. Any operations allocated to a billboard, usually directly via the planning mode, will be delegated to any available workstations linked to the billboard.