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is it just me ? since the production science pack require enormous item, like stone, copper, iron, oil.

while hi tech require copper, iron, oil.

Hellatze wrote:is it just me ? since the production science pack require enormous item, like stone, copper, iron, oil.

while hi tech require copper, iron, oil.

Production science pack needs Assembly M/C -1, Electric engine unit and Electric Furnace while Hi-Tech science pack requires Battery, Processing unit, Speed Module -1 and copper cable. Hi-Tech is way more harder to make than Production

Hellatze wrote:is it just me ? since the production science pack require enormous item, like stone, copper, iron, oil.

while hi tech require copper, iron, oil.

I wouldn't consider stone "enormous item".
Yes, it's a single additional raw material requirement, but that's to say nothing about either the required throughput of those materials, not the complexity of the recipes that use them.

Blue science also requires the same 3 base materials as hitech (well, four... in all cases plastic requires coal), that clearly doesn't mean it's exactly as difficult to produce.

Hi tech requires a huge amount more green circuits than any of the other techs, and that in turn requires a huge copper infrastructure, far beyond what you would have set up at that point for any of the other science packs. It's also the only science pack that requires sulfuric acid production from the oil infrastructure.

well, damn i mean rock require some transit system to be automated. you are lucky to get 4 type resource at the same spot. no mention those damn plastics.

as for science, not a problem by me. they require less manufacturing machine.

It is true that there are less kinds of items in Production pack chain, items in Hitech share ingredients more often.
But the amount of required items in the process is much higher for Hitech packs. They are much more expensive and require more assembly time.

at least they didnt require another transit lines.

also copper wire are easy to made, speed module takes time, but cheap to produces, battery just need iron and sulphur, processing unit are just takes long to produces.

I consider production is harder to make. It uses a lot of iron (which tends to be the progress limiting resource in 0.15 rather than copper or oil), and is not amenable to productivity. Though high-tech may technically have a higher resource requirement it really benefits a lot from productivity; blue and green circuits are some of the best recipes to use prod3 in, red circuits, plastic, copper wire, batteries - all these are much better places to use prod3 modules than iron/steel/engines. So not only are there generally more steps you can use productivity in when making high tech, but a number of the steps are also ideal places to put prod3 modules.

If you productivity all the things, high tech packs probably end up like half the cost of production packs.

Which is not to say that I think it's poorly balanced. High tech packs are cheap with an expensive and high tech setup for making them. Productivity packs require raw industrial grunt - more miners, more furnaces - these setups are cheap to make. It's a cool dynamic.

you do know how much goes into one blue card? and it needs 3 of them

To put it in perspective, I have tried to set up separate outposts that are dedicated to making these science packs, one for production and one for high tech. My goal is to achieve 2 packs/second for each type without any modules or beacons. The production science outpost has 108 assemblers, the high tech one is 240 assemblers, this is not including chem labs that are elsewhere for making oil products which I bring in by train to both locations.

The production science needs more of the basic materials. I have trains for copper and iron plates, steel, plastic, lube, and stone bricks for purple science. For yellow science I only need copper, iron, plastic and acid, but those are also each in significantly higher volume.

I think if you are trying for the same output rate of packs, it will take you much longer to set up high tech science -- especially when you factor in the added mining and smelting that is required to meet the needed volume.

I was curious about this as my anecdotal experience was similar to that of BlakeMW - in late game, once productivity is in place, I found production pack difficulty to be atleast as much as that of hi-tech pack.

Below is a comparison of what it costs to produce 100 science per minute for Hi Tech and Production, both with and without modules, courtesy of helmod. (Sorry that the columns don't line up - I have the recipes broken down in the same order in the production tab but the roll-up overview still shows different orders of columns for the raw resources. Also, ignore the energy usage columns - I didn't bother updating the inputs required there since it's not relevant to this discussion.)

Hi tech pack is clearly more expensive without any modules. At the same time, the savings from max productivity along the hi-tech pack production chain are absolutely staggering - copper and iron ore cost is reduced by ~67% and 70%, respectively (and similar savings on petroleum). The savings for production pack are much more modest in comparison. If we sum the total raw ore cost post-productivity (incl. stone and coal), we see that hi tech and production pack are roughly on par. (This excludes oil, ofc - then again, since the big oil buffs in 0.15, I have never had petroleum as a bottleneck).

I've played through the mid-game twice in 0.15 so far, once in marathon and once without - In neither play through did I make a single hi-tech pack without (at the very least) 3x productivity 2s in each of the assemblers (not just for high tech pack itself, but also for all red circuits, green circuits and cable). I tend to spend a fair bit of time at the point in the game where I have purple science, but before I have yellow science since, for me, assembler 3 is the most important mid-game tech in 0.15, given it lets us double our modules per assembler. I don't feel the need to rush out hi-tech science, which lets me build up my module count before going for hi-tech. This probably explains why I didn't until now appreciate the cost of a hi tech pack that's made "straight up", sans modues.

iceman_1212 wrote:I don't feel the need to rush out hi-tech science, which lets me build up my module count before going for hi-tech. This probably explains why I didn't until now appreciate the cost of a hi tech pack that's made "straight up", sans modules.

I am making roughly 145 packs/min of each type right now and have not used a single module yet (that is the next step in my master plan) and without modules it takes about 2.5x the number of assemblers to handle high tech science than production science. I'll be curious where I end up once I add several hundred modules and fully speed beacon the whole thing -- it will really be cooking then! I just hope my train network and support outposts can handle the supply needs.