Episode 23 is another live stream. The train from last time works, but the commentary calls it "sort of useless in a way": it runs from one spot to another and then empties "slowly slowly slowly." The plan now is a smelting area out in open ground, fed by train. Most of the first half goes into clearing and defending that ground, and the second half into the train stop and the furnaces beside it. By the end a train has made a real delivery, but the furnaces are not cooking yet and nothing is researching.
Turrets into new ground
Basket picks a spot "way up here" with room to bring trains in and out, grabs turrets, inserters and belts, and starts a turret line fed by a belt, with power poles alongside. Biters come in almost at once, some of them big. "No way, you're a big guy! Oh my goodness! Okay, run away!" A laser turret helps with the bigger ones.
When a viewer suggested walls, the commentary was curious: "I feel like I had walls before... unless I didn't research walls." A message on screen reads "started research Stone walls," and it finishes moments later. Gates go into research next. The turret line keeps going, running north and then east, and the commentary notes it now encloses "two iron, iron and copper deposits."
It is not smooth. Turrets run out of ammo faster than the factory can supply them: "I'm building so many turrets that it's not able to put them in as quick." Repair parts are short on copper too. On a check of another corner, all the turrets there are gone, and Basket puts new ones in.
The drop-off stop
With the area fortified, a rail goes in on the inside of the turret line and curves down into the new space. Basket places a train stop and renames it "OreDropOff." The idea, in the commentary's words: "a train will arrive and we'll empty it out very quickly." Rows of inserters pull from the wagons on both sides into chests, so "the train can leave and then fill up somewhere else."
Then a better idea: the same train could bring coal. Basket swaps in filter inserters so iron and copper go one way and coal goes the other, as fuel. Underground belts carry the fuel under the lines and off to the side.
Steel furnaces
Next come the steel furnaces, the kind that "take fuel." Fitting fuel, ore and output around them takes several tries. Basket wants the fuel on a middle belt, finds the underground belts will not connect that way ("Okay so that's a shame"), and settles on one belt with fuel on the outside lane and "stuff to cook on the inside." A chest buffer holds fuel coming in. A stack of splitters gets crafted and then dropped: "I don't really need splitters anymore." The result is two blocks of furnaces, each in two long rows, with fast inserters in and out.
The commentary calls it "the concept for my super-smelting thing," but no train reaches it yet: "the train route isn't really connected."
The first delivery
Connecting it means cutting a path through forest ("I don't know of a faster way to take out trees, sadly") and running rail down and around the older base. On the way the train from last episode turns up still at its stop, emptying, as it has been for "this entire episode."
Basket climbs into the locomotive and sets a new schedule: the old pickup spot until "Full cargo inventory," then OreDropOff until "Empty cargo inventory." The train runs up the new line ("It's so quick"), and the inserters empty it into the chests so fast that the commentary thinks it left on its own: "it emptied so quick." Two snags show up: fuel is not loaded into the locomotive automatically, and the cargo is finished plates, not ore. "This isn't stuff that needs to be cooked up."
Where it ends
"For now it's just gonna stockpile a bunch of iron." The plans for next time are coal for the furnaces, maybe from a stop in the old coal area, raw ore instead of plates, walls along the turret line, and then "phase two would be having multiple trains running around." The research box reads "Press T to start a new research." The commentary closes the stream, and the video ends on the base at night.