The Complete Science Suite - Compact, Efficient and Balanced
Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 5:51 am
Firstly the little part in my brain that demands efficiency screams every time I watch an LP and see people with about 4 or 5 of each red/green/blue science pack assemblers, with massive backlogs of red and green science packs sitting on belts. Also they normally have far too many assemblers to make the science pack's component parts.
In continuation of my previous thread: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=6628, This thread is about compact efficient and balanced production of all the science packs, and not so much about getting it up and running fast.
I would also like to see peoples science layouts, so here is a pattern I have been working on that tries to maximise the possible output of every assembler involved whilst also providing a balanced output of the 4 science packs in the most space efficient way.
The 3-3-6-1 Complete Science Suite
It may look like a total mess, but trust me it runs like clockwork
3 Red pack assemblers, 3 Green pack assemblers, 6 Blue pack assemblers and 1 Alien pack assembler (3-3-6-1).
Providing there is no shortage in the raw material input, all the science pack assembler will run at 100% production, this will provide the following output:
Red packs: 24.8 per minute
Green packs: 23.2 per minute
Blue packs: 23.3 per minute
Alien packs: 29.9 per minute
(taken over several 30 minute stints of continuous production, may be some inaccuracies in measurements, but not enough to matter)
This pattern hits a "sweet spot" so to speak, the 13 science assemblers run full time and the 4 adv. circuit assemblers also run full time.
While running at optimum capacity after a given warm up time (buffers filling up) not a single adv. circuit will overflow and no science assembler will break production.
The next highest producer is "The Little Cogger" the Iron gear assembler, this assembler will run at roughly ~95% production, basically if this little guy goes down, the whole thing goes down (excluding adv. circuits and alien science packs), his favourite food is iron and he is very hungry
The rest of the assemblers are fairly untaxed (especially the lazy belt assembler) but they all need to be there, also if I used their idle time for other things, they would eat up too many iron gears and throttle science production.
Why not all assembler 3? Well if they are all assembler 3s then the Alien pack assembler becomes the lowest producer and all the lower packs will get over produced, also the fast inserters on the chain of inserter assemblers cant keep up with blue pack production. You want to only have 1 alien pack producer to maximise on productivity module bonus.
Why only basic belts? Don't need any higher... production is already max. I'm especially proud of the red circuit line, it starts as [wires/---] then [wires/adv. circuit], wires are blocked by tunnel hood and adv. circuits move over a lane for [adv. circuit/smart inserter], the smart inserters are blocked by another tunnel hood to allow the adv. circuits to overflow to [---/adv. circuits], also the very last blue pack assembler gets its adv. circuits exactly in time to not break production, and I mean EXACTLY (was a stroke of luck more then design).
Still not balanced enough?
Well if you got little to no packs in backlog and you are only working techs that need all 4 packs you can move to this: 3-3-6-1 High balance pattern
Red packs: 29.7 per minute
Green packs: 27.3 per minute
Blue packs: 27.2 per minute
Alien packs: 28.7 per minute
(don't know how alien packs came out as less, but... thats what was in the box after 30 mins... your guess is as good as mine)
This variant runs the red line on pretty much everything. Do note the changes: The various assembler up and down grades, extra fast inserter output for the wire assembler, extra fast inserter input on the smart inserter assembler, green circuit belt moved up to fast belts.
There is also some adv. circuit overflow due to the unmatching of blue pack craft power and adv. circuit craft power (about 3.2 adv. circuits per minute overflow)... but thats why the overflow is there, it can be used to supplement your main adv. circuit factory.
(this variant is not 100% tested, the above output is not guaranteed, if you look on the picture my plastic ran out so couldn't run the test any longer than 30mins).
Should you find you are backlogging on a particular science pack you can manually lower its output by down grading their assemblers (don't forget to come back later and rebalance >_<).
How to build
Theres nothing really going on here that isn't visible in the picture bar a few things:
All inserters are in their position and of their type for a reason, a variation of the pattern will damage the above output measurement.
All assemblers are of their types for balance (yea that red pack assembler is supposed to be an assembler 1).
Alien science pack assembler 3 has 4 productivity 1 modules in it, all other assemblers that can take modules are filled with efficiency 1 modules.
All wooden boxes are limited to 1 stack only except the wooden box directly between the belt and inserter assemblers which is unlimited.
There are 3 smart chests:
Smart chest in the middle of the red pack assemblers is green wired to its smart inserter, this smart inserter is set to [Iron Gear < 50] (not required but lowers buffer from the 100 you would get from a 1 stack wooden box).
Smart chest between the iron gear assembler and the belt assembler is red wired to its smart inserter, the smart inserter is set to [Iron Gear < 50] (as above).
Smart chest in the middle of the green pack assemblers is green wired to the belt assembler's smart output [belts < 50] and the inserter assembler's smart output [inserters < 50] (this is required).
The last two blue pack assemblers have an extra standard inserter input, this was to catch possible accidental adv. circuit overflow caused by the tunnel item bug (patched at time of writing this), I decided to leave them there as a "just in case".
What it needs
copper/batteries/steel/plastic input isn't hard to handle just make sure this build is the highest priority thing in your factory, you don't wanna starve your science and this thing will power you through science pretty fast provided you got enough labs.
Iron input needs to be high, not sure on the number but its something like ~250 per minute.
Green circuit input is also high, ~240 per minute (again not sure on the number) but a "Circuit Mill" will be able to feed it just fine.
Conclusion
Building and optimising this thing was great fun and trying to pack it all in tight was like "factorio tetris". I'm still testing to see how many labs it can feed continuously but it does power out the science pretty quick, well if you need more science... just build two of them .
This pattern and its variant are as compact, efficient and balanced as I can get whilst still keeping in mind its initial cost and power usage. If anyone can see a way of improving on it whilst taking all these factors in mind please let me know.
I'm sure you can get something more efficient with Logistic bot powered smart factories... but they are boring, also I'm designing this for my future speedrun attempts, I won't have Logistics bots.
Lastly please post pictures of your science builds here, I would love to see other peoples solutions to this problem (don't post stuff with big long useless belts... I hate those >_<)
In continuation of my previous thread: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=6628, This thread is about compact efficient and balanced production of all the science packs, and not so much about getting it up and running fast.
I would also like to see peoples science layouts, so here is a pattern I have been working on that tries to maximise the possible output of every assembler involved whilst also providing a balanced output of the 4 science packs in the most space efficient way.
The 3-3-6-1 Complete Science Suite
It may look like a total mess, but trust me it runs like clockwork
3 Red pack assemblers, 3 Green pack assemblers, 6 Blue pack assemblers and 1 Alien pack assembler (3-3-6-1).
Providing there is no shortage in the raw material input, all the science pack assembler will run at 100% production, this will provide the following output:
Red packs: 24.8 per minute
Green packs: 23.2 per minute
Blue packs: 23.3 per minute
Alien packs: 29.9 per minute
(taken over several 30 minute stints of continuous production, may be some inaccuracies in measurements, but not enough to matter)
This pattern hits a "sweet spot" so to speak, the 13 science assemblers run full time and the 4 adv. circuit assemblers also run full time.
While running at optimum capacity after a given warm up time (buffers filling up) not a single adv. circuit will overflow and no science assembler will break production.
The next highest producer is "The Little Cogger" the Iron gear assembler, this assembler will run at roughly ~95% production, basically if this little guy goes down, the whole thing goes down (excluding adv. circuits and alien science packs), his favourite food is iron and he is very hungry
The rest of the assemblers are fairly untaxed (especially the lazy belt assembler) but they all need to be there, also if I used their idle time for other things, they would eat up too many iron gears and throttle science production.
Why not all assembler 3? Well if they are all assembler 3s then the Alien pack assembler becomes the lowest producer and all the lower packs will get over produced, also the fast inserters on the chain of inserter assemblers cant keep up with blue pack production. You want to only have 1 alien pack producer to maximise on productivity module bonus.
Why only basic belts? Don't need any higher... production is already max. I'm especially proud of the red circuit line, it starts as [wires/---] then [wires/adv. circuit], wires are blocked by tunnel hood and adv. circuits move over a lane for [adv. circuit/smart inserter], the smart inserters are blocked by another tunnel hood to allow the adv. circuits to overflow to [---/adv. circuits], also the very last blue pack assembler gets its adv. circuits exactly in time to not break production, and I mean EXACTLY (was a stroke of luck more then design
).Still not balanced enough?
Well if you got little to no packs in backlog and you are only working techs that need all 4 packs you can move to this: 3-3-6-1 High balance pattern
Red packs: 29.7 per minute
Green packs: 27.3 per minute
Blue packs: 27.2 per minute
Alien packs: 28.7 per minute
(don't know how alien packs came out as less, but... thats what was in the box after 30 mins... your guess is as good as mine)
This variant runs the red line on pretty much everything. Do note the changes: The various assembler up and down grades, extra fast inserter output for the wire assembler, extra fast inserter input on the smart inserter assembler, green circuit belt moved up to fast belts.
There is also some adv. circuit overflow due to the unmatching of blue pack craft power and adv. circuit craft power (about 3.2 adv. circuits per minute overflow)... but thats why the overflow is there, it can be used to supplement your main adv. circuit factory.
(this variant is not 100% tested, the above output is not guaranteed, if you look on the picture my plastic ran out so couldn't run the test any longer than 30mins).
Should you find you are backlogging on a particular science pack you can manually lower its output by down grading their assemblers (don't forget to come back later and rebalance >_<).
How to build
Theres nothing really going on here that isn't visible in the picture bar a few things:
All inserters are in their position and of their type for a reason, a variation of the pattern will damage the above output measurement.
All assemblers are of their types for balance (yea that red pack assembler is supposed to be an assembler 1).
Alien science pack assembler 3 has 4 productivity 1 modules in it, all other assemblers that can take modules are filled with efficiency 1 modules.
All wooden boxes are limited to 1 stack only except the wooden box directly between the belt and inserter assemblers which is unlimited.
There are 3 smart chests:
Smart chest in the middle of the red pack assemblers is green wired to its smart inserter, this smart inserter is set to [Iron Gear < 50] (not required but lowers buffer from the 100 you would get from a 1 stack wooden box).
Smart chest between the iron gear assembler and the belt assembler is red wired to its smart inserter, the smart inserter is set to [Iron Gear < 50] (as above).
Smart chest in the middle of the green pack assemblers is green wired to the belt assembler's smart output [belts < 50] and the inserter assembler's smart output [inserters < 50] (this is required).
The last two blue pack assemblers have an extra standard inserter input, this was to catch possible accidental adv. circuit overflow caused by the tunnel item bug (patched at time of writing this), I decided to leave them there as a "just in case".
What it needs
copper/batteries/steel/plastic input isn't hard to handle just make sure this build is the highest priority thing in your factory, you don't wanna starve your science and this thing will power you through science pretty fast provided you got enough labs.
Iron input needs to be high, not sure on the number but its something like ~250 per minute.
Green circuit input is also high, ~240 per minute (again not sure on the number) but a "Circuit Mill" will be able to feed it just fine.
Conclusion
Building and optimising this thing was great fun and trying to pack it all in tight was like "factorio tetris"
. I'm still testing to see how many labs it can feed continuously but it does power out the science pretty quick, well if you need more science... just build two of them .This pattern and its variant are as compact, efficient and balanced as I can get whilst still keeping in mind its initial cost and power usage. If anyone can see a way of improving on it whilst taking all these factors in mind please let me know
.I'm sure you can get something more efficient with Logistic bot powered smart factories... but they are boring, also I'm designing this for my future speedrun attempts, I won't have Logistics bots.
Lastly please post pictures of your science builds here, I would love to see other peoples solutions to this problem (don't post stuff with big long useless belts... I hate those >_<)
