Landmine

Lore & Background

In the quiet aftermath of the factory's first expansion, the player learns that biters do not respect property lines. A smelter cluster left unattended overnight becomes a feeding ground, and the resulting swarm can strip a freshly laid conveyor line in minutes. The Landmine was the first answer to that problem: a small, unassuming device that looks almost like a discarded component until something with too many legs walks over it. The device is deliberately crude by the standards of the factory's later arsenal. There is no radar, no targeting subroutine, no power draw. A single electronic circuit provides just enough logic to sense a nearby biological signature and close a circuit that ignites a small charge. The result is a sharp, concussive burst that scatters whatever was standing on it. It is not elegant, but it is honest: you place it, you leave, and the factory defends itself in the most basic way possible. Veteran players often note that the Landmine represents a philosophical shift in the game's design. Up to this point, the player has been the factory's sole defender, sprinting between biters with a gun. The Landmine introduces the idea that the factory can be a participant in its own survival, even if only in the most primitive sense. It is the seed from which the entire turret-and-automation defense paradigm grows.

In Their Own Story

The rain had stopped, but the red dirt still glistened around the base of the iron smelter. Mara crouched low, her boots crunching on gravel, and pressed the small grey disc flat against the ground. It sat there, unremarkable, almost like a dropped washer. She placed six more in a loose arc around the copper smelter, each one a whisper of a click as it latched into the dirt. Behind her, the factory hummed its low, patient hum. Conveyors ticked. Pistons thumped in their endless rhythm. And out in the dark beyond the floodlights, she could hear them—dozens of wet, clicking mandibles, patient and hungry, waiting for the factory to make a mistake. She didn't wait to see what happened. She walked back to her crafting table, pulled another circuit from the stack, and started the next one. The landmines would do their quiet work. They always did.

Reader's Guide

The Landmine chain is short and straightforward, making it one of the simplest production recipes in the game. Landmine (1 Electronic Circuit + 1 Iron Plate) is crafted in a crafting table or any assembling machine. Electronic Circuit (1 Iron Plate + 1 Copper Cable) is crafted in an assembling machine. Copper Cable (1 Copper Plate) is crafted in an assembling machine. Iron Plate (1 Iron Ore) and Copper Plate (1 Copper Ore) are produced in smelters. Per Landmine, the raw material cost is 2 Iron Ore and 1 Copper Ore. The full upstream chain is: Iron Ore → Iron Plate; Copper Ore → Copper Plate → Copper Cable; Iron Plate + Copper Cable → Electronic Circuit; Electronic Circuit + Iron Plate → Landmine. The typical bottleneck at scale is smelting: each Landmine demands two iron smelting operations and one copper smelting operation. If your smelters are already feeding an iron-plate or copper-plate line for other purposes, the marginal cost is low, but a dedicated landmine line will compete for smelter slots. As the factory grows, landmine production rarely becomes a priority. A few hundred units early on cover most perimeter needs, and later defenses (turrets, guns, spikies) render them largely obsolete. The chain scales linearly with no tiered machine requirements, so it never becomes a complex sub-factory of its own.

Did You Know?

• The Landmine is one of the few weapons in Factorio that requires no ammunition, no power, and no player interaction after placement—it is fully autonomous once deployed.
• Because the Landmine's trigger is purely proximity-based, placing them in a tight cluster can cause a small chain of detonations if multiple enemies are nearby, creating a localized 'minefield' effect.
• The Landmine recipe deliberately reuses the Electronic Circuit, meaning any factory already producing circuits for turrets, trains, or logistics robbers has essentially zero additional overhead for landmine production.
• In the game's progression, the Landmine sits in a unique niche: it is the first weapon that the player can deploy and then leave, introducing the concept of passive, automated defense before any turret is available.