A field manual for FrontWars

Factories: rails and trains

A factory costs 125,000 and does two recorded jobs: it lays railroads to nearby buildings, and it spawns trains that pay on every visit. The client's build menu describes it as something that "produces units" instead, which is the first thing to know about factories.

• TESTEDthe price and both description strings, 2026-11-03
• IN-GAMEthe factory, railroad and train lines from Instructions
• OFFICIAL ONLYSteam's bullet list mentions factories without mechanics
• NEEDS CHECKwhat one train visit pays, and whether it scales

The two descriptions

The bar tooltip says the factory creates railroads and spawns trains. The build menu says it produces units. Both are on screen in the same build, and we did not find a setting that changes which one appears. Treat the tooltip as the one that describes the mechanic and the menu line as the one that describes the slot, and do not expect either to be complete.

Rails

You do not draw track. The Instructions screen states that a factory automatically lays railroads toward nearby cities, ports and factories, and that it can connect to friendly neighbours' buildings as well as your own. That second half is the part most guides leave out: a factory on an ally's border keeps paying, and a rail line through their city is still a rail line.

Trains

A train pays fixed gold for each building it visits, per the Instructions screen, and buildings belonging to a friendly neighbour carry a bonus. The screen says "fixed", which is worth recording precisely because a competing wiki prints a tiered table of payouts by city level — 50,000, 100,000, 300,000. We did not reproduce that table and this page does not repeat it. If the payout is fixed, the tier number is wrong; if it scales, the word "fixed" is loose. That question is open.

Placing one

Two rules that follow from the recorded mechanics rather than from taste: put the factory where its rails can reach more than one building, and put it where the route is not the front line. Rails pay on visits, so a line that survives is worth more than a line that was clever for one minute.

Cost is the same 125,000 as a city, which makes the choice between them a choice about which number you need next: the size of the army, or the speed at which gold comes back.

Last checked against the client: 2026-11-03 · client v42.5