My dissapointment came when i read that a rocket defense only takes 0.5 seconds to craft, and takes a total of 450 items to craft. That will be a problem to input. Using inventory to inventory inserters, you are able to insert irems 5 times as fast, but that is still not enough to keep it fed fast enough.
My next goal was to simply find the way to feed an assembler components as fast as possible, and dessign a factory able to keep that assembler feeded.
Finding maximum feeding for the assembler
That means each defense take a bit less than 4.2 seconds to be crafted.
Next step is calculating how many of each resource I need to make that possible:
Calculating the cost of each rocket defense
As you can see, it takes about three times as much iron and copper to make it that the game suggests, as it doesent show the reagents needed for the Processing Units.
Actually, without the modules, the cost goes down to 3050 iron, 4900 copper, 550 coal and 1725 Petroleum Gas. Just a bit of loose change compared to the real cost.
With a batch of those getting done each 4.2 seconds, you need a lot of assemblers, furnaces and chemical plants:
Assemblers, furnaces and chemical plants
About 121k furnaces (either steel or electric), 72k Assemblers and 2100 Chemical plants. This is without counting all the oil extration or processing, or the drills (130k drills)
That totals to an electric consumption of 51.8GW, still not taking into consideration oil pumps, refineries or chemical plants for cracking.
With each solar pannel having a real output of (60kW*(0.5+0.2))=42kW, feeding this monstruosity would take a grand total of 1234k solar panels, and 1036k accumulators, or alternably, 102k Steam engines and 143k Boilers, but that would consume 6475 extra coal each second, almost doubling the necessary coal.
Assuming a compact design needs a 6*3 space for electric furnaces, 4*3 for mining drills, 6.5*3 for assembly machines, 2*2 for accumulators and 3*3 for solar panels, the total area required is 20.3 million square tiles, with approximatelly 75% of that area being taken by solar panels/accumulators. To put that into contrast, a single locomotive train would take 4 and a half minutes to go around such facility.It would probably need to be about 20% to 40% bigger to accomodate for all the belts, trains and power poles taking things around.
Finally, to build the factory itself, you need the machines. Leaving out power poles and belts (which might add a bit more time), and with all the assembling perfectly organized, my theoretic factory would take about 7.7 minutes to build itself (or a copy of itself). That pityfull factory on the first post, (at a mere 0.017 RDpM, compared to this factory 14.4 RDpM) would take four and a half days to build all the components.
So here i leave it for today. Tomorrow i might come back with measurements for optimal space usage when smelting and crafting the different components, and initial designs for the different modules that will make that factory (right now i only have the last one, the rocket deffense one, feeded by logistic bots)
PD: I might start a new thread so i dont take over this one.
