Factorio Forums

Hi,
So I've been trying and looking for a way to create green science nicely and efficiently within the first half-hour as I want to do the train achievement.
The materials for the locomotive is quite easy and fast to get down. I am struggling to get the science up and running nicely, in a way where I don't have to tear apart stuff as I end up losing to much time.

I remember some years ago when I found a two hours speedrun checklist of what to build and how much to build of each item. It would be nice finding that one again or an updated list for the 0.17 version as I can't keep track with the youtube guides out there. I used for my first try at the 8-hour speedrun where I got red science within the first hour and used another hour to get green one setup.

During my locomotive run, I did manage to get a temporarily red science within the first 30mins but as I had to tear it apart and relocate it to make space for more power I used another half hour towards a more permanent setup. (Update: I found a youtube that made a jump start base for red and green science and it was most helpful to obtain the "getting on track" achievement, next up is to find a way to launch the rocket within 8 hours as I previously used about 50 hours when I launched it for the first time.)

Also I think during those runs I forgot to build certain things sooner than when I should, or built too much. And, that is why it would be nice to have some sort of chart or a checklist towards what to research, when to research it, what to build how much to expand, etc. (Just like the list I found several years ago that I seem to not be able to track down).

If anyone has some blueprints they want to share I would be grateful as I tend to think about what setup would be more beneficial and always tend to overbuild or underbuild using more time than what I have. With all the latest updates I will be throwing myself into a whole new game with recipe changes. As purple science is changed/removed and blue science is changed into a much more complex recipe in my opinion. I am trying to make my own blueprints as I can't find anything that I can use myself, and without knowing the proper ratios it's hard to build it without expanding over time. Such as the smelting station, Where the if I remember correctly its 48 furnaces that take up an entire yellow belt. Also with the power efficiency where most people use the two engines per boiler setup (Adding more than two is more energy efficient as the math doesn't add up vs practical doing it). I have added at least 5engines to one boiler and it works just fine. I used to add more back in 0.14 or when the game was quite "new".

Any blueprints would be much appreciated as I am not interested in competing against the World record speedrunners and just wanna do the achievement for the fun it really is. Also to note that how I play isn't valid for those speedruns to count as an "official" speedrun either. Thanks for understanding and I really hope someone out there can be able to sort me out.

Thanks for any help with this!

would really love to nail down those speedy achievements as I'm not the most hardcore speedrun person out there. I like to take my time and thought I should try to challenge myself to get the achievement. Stay safe everyone!

These are the notes I wrote before doing my speedrun, back on 0.13 [1]:
It's not going to be too useful for you directly, since the game has changed dramatically in the time since then. Early milestones are going to be pretty similar, though, so here's my list [2]:

• T-7:44:00 (approx.) -- Start heading off to build the power plant. I have 4 burner miners for coal, 7 for iron, 2 for copper, 2 for stone (1 to a box, 1 to a brick furnace) at this point.
• T-7:40:15 -- Lab placed to research start 1st research of the game
• T-7:37:01 -- Temporary red science production. 1 box with 200 copper, 400 iron feeds one assembler for gears and another for red science into a single lab.
• T-7:26:24 -- First smelter column for iron is hooked up. (Iron production will start later, due to yellow belts being slow!). This would smelt a full yellow belt of iron if it were steel furnaces, but they're not, so it's only a ½ belt instead.
• T-7:23:20 -- Single assembler for yellow belts produced (forgot to do this earlier!), limited to 400, feeding directly off the smelter array.
• T-7:19:21 -- First smelter column for copper is hooked up.
• T-7:09:48 -- Proper red-science production hooked up to what will be 20 research labs
• T-7:04:08 -- Green-science production is hooked up now. I apparently made green circuits on the spot, which is highly amusing to me.
• T-7:03:33 -- Start researching oil production, first green science tech I research
• T-6:57:07 -- First ½ smelter column for steel production, bleeding off of iron production for now. I need the steel for pumpjacks!
• T-6:52:23 -- Very basic oil setup: 2 pumpjacks, 1 refinery, 1 tank each of crude, heavy, light, and petroleum gas. [3] Power starts flagging, so I expand power production next. Also, I'm still in the middle of researching plastics.
• T-6:42:47 -- First break in recording, which is declared because I now have 5 pumpjacks working, and I've started expanding the main bus with its three products: copper, iron, and steel.
• T-6:36:27 -- Green circuit production is operational. I'm actually surprised it took me this long to build it.
• T-6:34:59 -- Iron smelting upgraded to using steel furnaces.
• T-6:30:58 -- Solid fuel from light oil is being boxed up, because I'll need three chests full of it and I might as well start early. There's also a tank of lubricant being filled up.
• T-6:14:05 -- First plastic is being made.
• T-6:04:44 -- First battery is made.
• T-5:59:20 -- Forgot to upgrade the assemblers to the labs to level 2... so I did that.
• T-5:58:22 -- First red circuits being made, and hooked up to the blue science production. I can now research any blue science tech, but I instead focus on getting to concrete production and military tech for the biter escapade.

At this point, my list of milestones becomes pretty irrelevant for modern Factorio, so I'll summarize very briefly. The third hour was spent preparing myself and the factory for my alien artifact hunt. This meant storing in a chest everything you need in bulk for the actual rocket sprint: steel, solid fuel, plastic, concrete, speed modules, blue circuits, electric engine units. I don't produce these items in bulk quantities--one, maybe two assemblers per item. I also make sure there's no obvious bottlenecks in the early phases.

The fourth hour was the artifact hunt, which I also spent handcrafting the necessary 80 productivity 1 modules for the 4 productivity 4. When I return, I set up the oil cracking, and then spend the fifth hour basically looking at the factory for bottlenecks and increasing production of things that are moving too slowly. The priority here is research--the rocket silo is a very long research time, and you can't start the assembly process of anything until it's built. Once that's started, I build the assembler arrays in a more disconnected location, and start moving components by hand from the chests where they've accumulated to where they need to go. The rocket itself was launched at 6:45:27. Were I more diligent at certain tasks, I probably could have managed 6 hours.


A few things to note: I did the run without building any mall whatsoever. Blueprints weren't saved between games back then, so you had to remember all of the builds yourself. But you also don't need a lot of production; the only objects you need in stupendous quantities are belts and pipes, and maybe inserters and poles. I had just a single belt, pipe, gear assembler each producing for personal factory construction work, driven directly from the bus--power poles and inserters, not to mention assemblers, chests, or furnaces were all handcrafted on demand in batches of 5-20.

As for timing, if you're doing red/green science by the end of your first hour and you have all oil products by the end of your second hour, you should be good. I haven't timed out newer science pack production, but I'd spitball that you should have all science packs being produced by the end of the third hour. Once you do that, put together small assembly lines for each of the intermediate components (such as the speed modules and blue circuits for rocket control units), and buffer them in chests. The goal isn't to build a factory launching a rocket an hour, it's to produce a single rocket in 8 hours, and you can achieve that with a rocket-every-4-hours rate, as long as you plan ahead and buffer the output so that your factory never shuts down. It's only at the end that you need a surge of manufacturing to produce the actual rocket bits, and you can power that by shutting off the rest of your factory if everything else is read to go.

Oh, and most importantly: use 4 production 3 modules in the rocket silo before you build a single rocket part (even handcrafting if necessary, although be forewarned that this will take an hour of pocket crafting time). That saves far more resources than anything else you do.


[1] I think that's the version. It was before the boiler/steam engine overhaul, and pumps annoyingly required advanced oil processing. And, obviously seen in my notes, you needed to kill the bases to get alien artifacts to complete the game.
[2] I saved a recording of my playthrough, but the recording ended up with some massive tearing issues I never noticed until after I completed it, so I never tried uploading it anywhere.
[3] On this version, oil was perhaps the most critical resource in the entire game, since default oil settings were so barren. I figured I needed oil set up as early as possible just to get enough oil to complete the game, and my plan was heavily structured to economize on oil output.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =656659577 this is for any% but hope it will help you. Amount of assemblers for science depends on your time goal, to calculate it you need to set expected running time for red/green, blue, purp, yelow. For example: 6h run, time goal for blue 2h, running time is around 4h, min amount need 5000, /60/4 = 20.83 per minute. This is 5,55 t2 assemblers without modules, so you can use 6 with some buffer.