So I thought to myself: No more of that!
Introducing: The 1.4s Science Pack Blueprint series.
The goal is simple: Create self-contained Blueprints capable of outputting exactly 1.4 Science Packs per second under optimal conditions while using as many Productivity Modules as possible, being compact, wasting as little assembly machine speed as possible and not giving a sh*t about energy consumption.
The method is simple, too.
Step 1) Create a spreadsheet detailing the required resources, the total crafting speed percentage required and all of that for each step of the way.
Step 2) Design a factory with the given parameters.
Step 3) Iterate on the design to fix errors and increase compact-ness.
Here is a Screenshot of the Spreadsheet for Red Science Packs:
A quick breakdown:
- Required per Second: For everything besides the Pack itself, this is how many of this Item are required per second (duh). For the Pack, it's how many you'd like to produce per second.
Crafting Speed: The base crafting speed of the corresponding facility. In this case, both items are produced in Assembly Machines 3, so both have a CS of 1.25.
Crafting Time: How long the item takes to create without modifiers.
Output: How many items the recipe creates itself. For example, the wire recipe yields 2 items per craft, so its output would be 2.
Prod: How many productivity modules are to be used in each facility. This value can be changed based on preference.
Cycles per Second required: One of the two major calculations in this sheet. It shows how many crafting cycles have to be completed each second to produce the required amount of items when considering productivity modules.
Percent Speed required: The other major calculation. This is the total percentage points of the base speed required to produce the required amount of items, assuming that each facility is stocked with the given amount of productivity modules. Note that speeds in Factorio stack additively, so if you have 1 Assembly Machine 3 (100% speed), 4 productivity modules within it (-60% speed) and 1 Beacon with 2 speed modules (+100/2 = 50% speed), your end result is (100% - 60% + 50%) = 90% total speed.
From the given table, we can read 2 important things:
First, we only need as single AM3 with 4 Productivity Modules to supply the required amount of iron gears. In fact, this single machine will considerably overproduce.
Second, we have a nice, round number of 400 for the required speed percentage for red packs. As each AM3 with 4 Prods has a speed of 40%, we see that we only need 5 AM3s for red packs plus a single double speed beacon affecting 4 machines. (5 * 40% + 4 * 50% = 2 * 200% = 400%)
These conditions are optimal for a rather nice blueprint:
As long as this factory is supplied with 1 copper plate per second from the bottom left belt and about 3 iron plates per second from the bottom right belt, it will output precisely 1.4 red science packs per second from the top middle.
Here's the Blueprint string (v. 0.15.18):
Blueprint
If you have feedback to my methods, the blueprint itself or my writeup, feel free to comment below!
