Factorio Coordinates & Teleportation Guide

Factorio: Using Coordinates & Teleportation

As your factory expands to cover thousands of map chunks, keeping track of specific outposts, oil fields, and biter nests becomes a challenge. Factorio utilizes a standard X,Y coordinate system where (0,0) is the exact center of your starting area. Understanding these numbers is key to precise planning and advanced server administration.

How to View Your Coordinates

1. While in-game, press F4 to open the "Debug Settings" window.
2. Select the Always tab at the top.
3. Locate and check the box for show-detailed-info.
4. Close the menu. Your coordinates will now appear in the top-left corner of your screen.
   • Note: The display shows both your Character position and your Cursor position.

Useful Console Commands

To use these commands, you must have admin permissions on the server. Press ~ to open the console.

Print Current Position

Use this to get your exact coordinates for a teammate:

/c game.player.print(game.player.position)

Teleport to Specific Coordinates

Instantly move to a point on the map (e.g., X=500, Y=-300):

/c game.player.teleport({500, -300})

Teleport to Another Player

Move directly to a teammate:

/c game.player.teleport(game.players["TeammateName"].position)

Travelling Without Lua

Two of the game's own commands move you or tell you where you are, and neither one is a Lua command, so neither depends on allow-commands being switched on for you:

• /cheat <planet-name> moves you to that planet and /cheat <platform-name> to that space platform. Travel is one branch of the same command as /cheat all, so it carries that command's cost: cheat mode disables achievements for the save. Name a planet it does not recognise and it answers with "Matching planets:" and the closest candidates, which doubles as a way to list them. See console commands for the full text of what /cheat does.
• /seed prints the starting map seed, which is the number you need if you want to look at the world outside the game.

That second one pairs with the Factorio map generator and seed viewer: feed it the seed and you can find the ore patch you are hunting for on a map view rather than by walking. The full command list is on console commands.

Coordinates Before the World Exists

The headless binary can render a map to a PNG before anybody joins, which is the cheapest way to plan outpost coordinates for a server you are about to start. The option parser's own arguments for it:

Argument	What it does
--generate-map-preview PATH	Generate preview images of the map. PATH names a PNG file, or ends in a slash to mean a directory.
--map-preview-size SIZE	Size in pixels of the preview. Default 1024.
--map-preview-offset X,Y	Offset of the centre of the map, in meters. Default 0,0. This is the argument that takes coordinates.
--map-preview-planet PLANET	Planet to generate the preview for. Default nauvis.
--map-gen-seed SEED	Seed to generate with, overriding any seed in the map-gen settings.
--map-gen-seed-max SEED	Renders a preview for every second seed from --map-gen-seed up to this one.
--generate-map-preview-random COUNT	Number of maps to generate with a random seed.
--report-quantities PROTOTYPE,...	While generating a preview, report approximate quantities of the named entity prototypes.
--threads THREADCOUNT	Number of threads to use when generating map previews. It affects previews only, not the running simulation.

The last two are the interesting pair. --report-quantities with --generate-map-preview-random is a seed hunter: render a batch of random seeds, ask each one how much iron and copper is near spawn, and pick before you commit the world. The centre of every preview is (0,0) unless you move it with --map-preview-offset, which uses the same coordinate system as everything on this page.

Worth knowing what the coordinates are addressing, too. A default Nauvis world is infinite in both directions: the map generation example ships width and height at 0, which is what unlimited looks like in that file, and starting_points at a single {"x": 0, "y": 0}. That single starting point is why (0,0) is the anchor for everything. If you want a world that is not infinite, the build also ships nine named presets you can pick with --preset, among them ribbon-world, island and rail-world, and those set the generation parameters for you.

Mapping Example

X,Y Offset	Resource/Area	Logistics Note
(0,0)	Spawn Point	Start of the main bus.
(2000, 0)	Deep Iron Outpost	Requires at least 4-8 train wagons for efficiency.
(0, 5000)	Uranium Field	Consider using a dedicated logistics subnet.

Navigate the infinite factory with ease. View plans.