Factorio Forums

what exactly does the expensive setting change for research and recipes?

It is similar to Marathon mod.
For example Iron Gear Wheels cost 4 Iron Plates. Other recipes consume more resources as well.
As for research - as an example the first Automation research which you have to do manually crafting those red bottles costs 40 red science as opposed to 10 in normal.

PacifyerGrey wrote:As for research - as an example the first Automation research which you have to do manually crafting those red bottles costs 40 red science as opposed to 10 in normal.

Expensive recipes itself doesn't change science cost (ignoring how science bottles get more expensive). There is a different setting for making research more expensive and it seems to be a simple number showing how many times more research bottles it takes to complete a research.

PacifyerGrey wrote:For example Iron Gear Wheels cost 4 Iron Plates. Other recipes consume more resources as well.

For recipes, Expensive roughly multiply base material cost and creation time by 2 to 4.
iirc a drill in Expensive cost 10 electronic circuits, 10 gears, 10 iron plates (from 3/5/10 in normal).
Intermediate products being also more expensives/taking more time to craft, it adds up pretty quickly.

Tbh, when solo playing, i'd keep recipes cost to normal, but crank up Science multiplier/cost. Cause when u need to manually craft a few factories, it takes ages =)

PacifyerGrey wrote:As for research - as an example the first Automation research which you have to do manually crafting those red bottles costs 40 red science as opposed to 10 in normal.

For researches, there is a normal/expensive setting, and a multiplier.
In the quoted exemple, the number of science pack needed is due to the default 4x multiplier in the Marathon setting.

I think Research cost works the same way as Recipes costs, adding more intermediary products albeit specificaly for Science packs.