Evidence and publishing standards
Editorial and Evidence Policy
Purpose and independence
Sandustry Guide & Wiki publishes original, task-focused help for players who need to build, diagnose, and recover factories. It is an independent and unofficial resource, not a product of Lantto Games or Hooded Horse. Game names and marks remain the property of their owners. The site does not claim developer endorsement, privileged access, or authority over the official Wiki. Its value should come from clear problem boundaries, reproducible observation, useful tools, and honest limits.
Source priority
Claims are organized by evidence tier. Current official store pages, developer or publisher announcements, official FAQs, and officially maintained references receive first priority for identity, supported features, component names, release state, and documented behavior. Publisher-hosted references and direct developer statements follow the same official boundary. Videos can demonstrate visible layouts and player workflows, but older demo footage cannot establish current Early Access values. Reddit and Steam discussions identify recurring questions, complaints, vocabulary, and candidate workarounds; they do not by themselves prove a universal recipe, rate, or bug.
Facts, observations, and recommendations
Each guide separates three kinds of statement. An official fact is tied to a current first-party source. A local observation describes what happened under a stated build, save, layout, material, and test condition. A recommendation is a conservative method derived from those facts and observations, such as isolating a reservoir or measuring accepted output. Recommendations are not presented as official mechanics. Exact rates are omitted when reliable current evidence is unavailable; the planner therefore asks users to enter measurements from their own factory.
How a guide is built
A guide begins with one user outcome rather than a keyword variation. The editor defines the boundary, finds official terminology, reviews community reports for recurring symptoms, and writes a quick answer that can be tested. The article then covers commissioning, normal observation, constrained states, shutdown, recovery, and evidence notes where relevant. Before publication, routes, related links, headings, FAQ content, source records, mobile layout, and rendered word depth are validated. Pages that cannot support an independent outcome are merged into a stronger guide instead of being published as doorway pages.
Early Access maintenance
Sandustry is an Early Access game, so balance, recipes, names, interfaces, and bugs may change. Every evidence record includes a checked date and build context. After a meaningful update, critical guides are reviewed against current official notes and their smallest relevant test is recommissioned where possible. Old demo material remains labeled as demo-era context. A community workaround that depends on a bug or undocumented behavior is described as an experiment and never made the only recommended production path.
Originality and media provenance
Published prose, planners, diagrams, brand graphics, and page layouts are created for this site. External pages are summarized and linked; they are not copied wholesale. Quotations, when necessary, remain short and attributed. Embedded YouTube material supplements rather than replaces the article and uses a privacy-enhanced player. Screenshots or artwork are published only when there is a documented permission, license, official press-use basis, or other defensible provenance. Unverified downloaded assets remain outside the rendered site.
Corrections and reproducibility
Corrections are welcome at [email protected]. A useful report includes the page URL, game build, platform, relevant blueprint or geometry, starting material and levels, expected result, actual result, minimal steps, and whether save/reload changes the behavior. The editor checks the cited source or attempts to reproduce the smallest relevant boundary. Confirmed errors are corrected with an updated date. Unresolved conflicts are labeled rather than forced into certainty, and a single anecdote does not silently replace current official documentation.
Advertising and commercial separation
Advertising does not determine guide conclusions, source ranking, or whether a game feature is recommended. Paid placement, sponsorship, affiliate relationships, free review access, or other material relationships must be disclosed close to the affected content. Advertising must remain visually distinct from navigation, planner controls, downloads, and editorial cards. It must not cover content, imitate a button, require a click to continue, or exceed the publisher content. Policy, contact, and other low-content operational pages are not intended as primary advertising inventory.
Automation and quality control
Software assists with route generation, schema consistency, broken-link checks, word counts, duplicate titles, evidence IDs, and static builds. Automation is not evidence and cannot promote a community claim into a fact. Every published entry must still have a distinct outcome, useful steps, a safe failure model, visible sources, and related routes. The release gate currently requires substantial rendered guide depth, one H1, at least six task sections, FAQs, and no placeholder markers. A passing automated check does not guarantee search ranking or advertising approval.
Contact and related policies
Readers can review the About page for ownership context, the Privacy Policy for data practices, and the Terms for use conditions. Questions, source updates, and correction evidence should be sent through the public contact address. The publication date, source links, and evidence boundary on an individual guide take precedence over an older generalized statement on this policy page.