• Craft yourself some green or red wires! I typically just use green wires, because green is cool, and red is for baddies. You can do A LOT of stuff with just wires.
  
• Now stick those wires onto a couple of things, they'll stick to basically anything, even power poles. In fact, you'll want to stick it on at least one power pole so you can see what's on the signals.
  
• Each time you stick to things together with wire, it consumes one wire. To cut it, use the same color wire on the 2 objects again to cut it, it won't refund the wire.
  
• Now signals. typically, ITEMS are what make most signals. The ICONS of every item in the game make up signals. For instance, you hook up a chest of items to a network, that network will signal all the items inside that chest. (ex: 13 of the iron plates icon, etc). Remember to put a wire on a power-pole, so you can see what's on the network, to help you debug stuff.
  
• The signals don't have to be items, sometimes they could just be other symbols, colors, or just generic numbers. But each signal (icon) must have a number associated with it.
  
• You can hook up wires to inserters, allowing you to turn them on or off given certain conditions. Click the inserter to see a bunch of options (Ex: Inserter turns ON only when the number of items in a box is < 100, or something).
  
• Same works with pumps. Hook pumps up to fluid tanks, set pumps to turn ON only when certain other fluids run low, or too high. (This here is how you manage oil)
  
• You can hook up wires to train stops, so when a train parks there, it would output the train's entire contents to the network. But the train itself needs to stay in autopilot mode for this to work.
  
• The other circuit thingies, like the comparators or arithmitatortots or whatever, are for more advanced stuff like nuclear power management. Turning inserters ON when steam levels are low, and OFF when they're high, for example. They're typically, IF this THEN this, type stuff. Pretty straightforward when you look at them, but can be a bit confusing if you're trying to figure out how they can be helpful by yourself. I don't use these objects often, as my brain is quite small, but I do use them. Luckily, the official wiki is FILLED with examples and basic tutorials for just about every aspect of the game.
  

Gravy Jones fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Feb 10, 2019

• Set up oil as usual. And have 2 chem-plants set to cracking stuff. Heavy to light, and light to petroleum.
  
• These chem-plants have PUMPS which are wired the storage tanks. The pumps will only turn on when when there's a SHORTAGE of something. (Ex: When petroleum is < 2k, light oil is being cracked)
  
• Next, I set up more chem-plants to produce solid fuel of all 3 types. These chem-plants are also set up with pumps that only turn on when there's an EXCESS of something. (Ex: When there's > 22k heavy oil, we start making heavy oil fuel)
  
• I run all the solid fuel to the boilers, sharing a belt-lane with coal. The boilers will use whatever fuel is available.