The order property is a simple string. When the game needs to sort prototypes (of the same type), it looks at their order properties and sorts those alphabetically. A prototype with an order string of "a" will be listed before other prototypes with order string "b" or "c". The "-" or "[]" structures that can be found in vanilla order strings do not have any special meaning.

The alphabetical sorting uses lexicographical comparison to determine if a given prototype is shown before or after another. If the order strings are equal then the game falls back to comparing the prototype names to determine order.

The order of special characters can be identified by looking at a UTF-8 character list. This is the order some common characters are sorted in:

• "-"

• "0"

• "9"

• "A"

• "Z"

• "["

• "]"

• "a"

• "z"

The following order strings would be ordered thusly then:

• "-"

• "a"

• "ab"

• "azaaa" (b is sorted before z, so "ab" comes before "az", regardless of the letters following it)

• "b"

• "b-zzz"

• "b[aaa]" ([ is sorted after - in UTF-8)

• "bb" (b is sorted after [ in UTF-8)