Where to Start
New Prospectors should read in order: the Beginner Guide (currencies, logistics, first machines), then Gold Production (the four-stage loop that funds everything), then the Map Guide (100 Gold well spent). The machine pages back you up whenever a specific building misbehaves.
For reference, official learning material also exists: the wiki's own Beginner's Guide (with a community tab of charts and ratios) and Steam community guides — including the official-adjacent "Sandustry Beginner's Guide" by Antony of Hooded Horse.