Some small details for 1 rocket per minute

[Xarovin]

I'm properly attempting it in vanilla without robots when the next update comes out, so I'm wondering about a few of the smaller details.

My basic idea is to design large modular blueprints for each item (just big enough that it'll get 1 or 2 belts fully loaded), and then group them together to make bigger modules (it's quite easy to plan that way).
For example I got round to making one that turns 8 belts of ores into 11400 electronic circuits per minute (roughly 1/4 of the required amount for a rocket) - http://i.imgur.com/7wgvG2Z.jpg. It needs a redesign though with the longer underground belts, though before I do it, I don't suppose anyone happens to know of any other changes which may affect this?

Anyway, a few questions -

Are any recipes likely to change, or are the old calculations I did for 0.13 still valid?
Given that you get 1000 space science from a rocket launch, is there a recommended number of red/green/blue science packs I should be producing at the same time to keep up with the infinite research?
If you have a constant stream of 1 train with 2 carriages to a single station (just enough that there's always the next train waiting), how many fully loaded belts can it supply?
Have pumps changed at all with the new design? If not, does the 5 pump design always work best no matter the amount of fluid, or does it have a worse effect than less pumps if there's not a huge amount in the lines?

That's all I can think of for now anyway, I'm dying to get started, just need to wait for those map generation tweaks first

[DaveMcW]

Simple math says that you need 16.67 science packs per second to keep up with 1 rocket per minute.

Recipes have changed a lot, you should probably opt into the experimental version now if you don't want to be surprised.

[Xarovin]

Ah I just looked up infinite research, so I just need 1000 red, green, blue and purple science packs per minute? That's a bit simpler than what I was expecting haha.
I'm aware science pack recipes have changed, not sure about the materials that are needed for rockets though

Just did a quick test and found a station can easily manage about 6 fully loaded belts which is actually quite nice, I thought it'd only be about 2 or so

[Mehve]

The rocket side of things hasn't changed too much, and is arguably just a little easier, thanks to the cheaper plastic recipe + the ability to use 3 production modules in each refinery/chem plant.

The 0.15 pumps are monsters and will single-handedly leave a fivepack from 0.14 in the dust - running them in parallel is basically pointless at this point. The real bottleneck now is whether or not you can keep them supplied with fluid to push, which is a different story and tends to involve direct attachment to a storage tank. The simplest approach is to just do what you've always done, except using single pumps at the intervals where you originally used parallel ones. If you want do some studying, there is more pumping performance to be extracted, but I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

The maximum extraction rate from train wagons is roughly 3 blue belts/wagon, although you'll have a little belt spaghetti to make that happen to multiple wagons simultaneously, and the wagon will empty in less than half a minute and you'll be stuck waiting for the next train to roll in. I personally prefer to pull one blue belt off each wagon, which tells me when I need longer trains or multiple stations.

Also, double check those science packs, they got heavily reworked since 0.14, and there are now 7 different packs to contend with.

[SyncViews]

One express belt per wagon with buffer chests generally seems to work out best for me (for ore which only stacks to 50, for items with bigger stacks then more belts are good). You can have more with upto 12 stack inserters, but you have to account for the fact the inserters need to pause while a train departs and the next arrives. Buffer chests and a single belt can handle that nicely to give an uninterrupted belt, then have multiple platforms/stations. Alternatively just use 12 stack inserters into provider chests straight to nearby furnaces.


Also I generally find larger trains (e.g. LCCC or LCCCC) generally work out a lot better than short ones (e.g. LCC). While they may be slower, they gain more cargo space than they loose speed and even with lots of signals short trains can only run so close to each other so cause more traffic/congestion.

Another thing to remember that ore is one of the least compressed items, in containers it only stacks to 50 (compared to 100 for plates and 200 for green circuits) so you can fit less in a wagon as well as other items needing multiple units of ore (e.g. a steel plate is 10 iron and a green circuit is 2 iron and 5 copper, without productivity). What this means is you want to convert that ore to other items as soon as possible, as pretty much anything else is more efficient for trains, bots and belts.

[Xarovin]

The problem with 1 belt per wagon is I'd need an insane number of them haha. I think for the required amount of steel it needed 16 fully loaded belts, then there'd be another 16 for electronic circuits, and probably a few dozen more for all the other bits. Provider/requester chests are totally cheating though, so I'm refusing to use them for anything

I'll keep that in mind about the larger trains, might use 4 wagons instead. I also didn't realise about the stack size, but I'll only be using trains to get the ore/oil barrels to a single point, the rest will be done with belts

[SyncViews]

Well actually assuming you have rocket fuel, max stack inserters and max braking force (which you should ) and assuming ore, 2 per wagon seems OK even for ore when I tested some LCCCC last night, its easy to try different things out by making a loop in a sandbox map (so dont actually smelt the ore, unload it then take it back to the loading station). Basically you want compressed belts, if you add too many you start getting gaps where the buffer chest ran dry which defeats the point.

Also if you did manage to get the trains in/out of a station fast enough for all those belts, you then need to get them over to furnaces. In some ways its easier to just have slightly separated stations so each station is next to its own furnace set.