Factorio Forums

I'm not sure if this has been done before (in fact I'd be surprised if it hasn't) but I was
curious what the total cost of all required science packs in Factorio amounts to.
So, since I apparently have way too much time on my hands, I wrote a little python
script to easily calculate the costs. You can find the script here on GitHub. I wrote
it so it is easy to add & remove individual science items.

Note: The following results are based on the costs listed in the wiki, specifically of
those science items listed on the ‘Research’ wiki page.
Edit: I added the missing technologies from the recent updates (0.11.10).
Edit2: Fixed some types that cause false results

Results
Red science packs: 41 635
Green science packs: 40 625
Blue science packs: 33 595
Alien science packs: 28 775

Total raw:
Copper: 656 890
Iron: 1 025 640.5
Petrol: 201 570
Coal: 33 595
Alien Artifacts: 2 877.5


Trivia
I also calculated the costs of a few interesting research groups. Most interesting result:
All Follower robot count x combined require a total of 1900 alien artifacts, which is
almost exactly 2/3 of the total alien artifacts required for research.
Hope you enjoyed. ^^

Wow this awesome! I was actually just wondering about this lately, and glad you came up with a script to do it.

Very interesting results! That is actually a frightening amount of plastic and batters required. Haha

Interesting!

The needed science packs are pretty close to each other. I didn't expect it to be that close between them.

Really good information, great job.

Would it be possible to break costs down into the harvestable resources? So steel becomes 5 iron, plastics become petroleum and coal, etc.

Good idea. I guess the intermediate products aren't really useful if you're not gonna craft it all by hand. ^^

I updated the post above.
I stopped at petrol, since the ratio of crude oil to petrol isn't fixed.
Turns out the 5:1 ratio for steel was enough to crack the million on iron.

Can we get a total of the techs other than Followers past L6? (I mean, really? You need that many destroyers? At those insane pack counts? )

n9103 wrote:Can we get a total of the techs other than Followers past L6? (I mean, really? You need that many destroyers? At those insane pack counts? )

You need around 60 destroyers (follower count 13) to take on massive worm/nest combos without retreating.
But you still save 14,000 alien science packs by skipping the last 7 follower techs!

DaveMcW wrote:

n9103 wrote:Can we get a total of the techs other than Followers past L6? (I mean, really? You need that many destroyers? At those insane pack counts? )

You need around 60 destroyers (follower count 13) to take on massive worm/nest combos without retreating. But you still save 14,000 alien science packs by skipping the last 7 follower techs!

... wut?
Are we pretending we're not using power armor at all?
With 25-30 I can all but ignore the biters and spitters, and just drop a handful of distractors on the big worms. I mean, sure, you could go wade into that solid mass of hives that fills the entire screen... you could also do something smart, and only take on the non-solid red radar chunks.

If we're not going to go complete brute-force by not completely maxing the follower count, then what's wrong with also using a little brains to go with the finesse?

n9103 wrote:I mean, sure, you could go wade into that solid mass of hives that fills the entire screen... you could also do something smart, and only take on the non-solid red radar chunks.

Did that already, once you clear out the map at max zoom level there are only full-screen hives left.

So which non-followers tech were you purposely not researching by that point?

New numbers as of 0.14.20

Red Science packs - 54920
Green Science packs - 54210
Blue Science packs - 42665
Purple Science packs - 36200

This is really nice, awesome work sir. Now I can plan my next factory with these numbers in mind for exact amount of bottles needed hehe.

Though I wonder what these numbers will be like in 0.15, hundreds of thousands or maybe closer to million?

Infinite. Several new infinite researches are being implemented that have no end.

Personally I'm hoping they don't go ahead with the 2% mining efficiency research... Unless they make it 1 of each science pack per level or drastically reduce the proposed cost of the new research it's going to be nonsense.