Reducing impact of promethium harvesting on UPS

[FasterJump]

I would like to suggest a simple solution to reduce the impact of promethium harvesting (space platforms) on UPS.

Using KonTheTurtle's base on reddit as an example, a 2M spm non-promethium base can run at 55 UPS, but 1M spm promethium base only runs at 30 UPS (on his machine).

My simple solution suggestion would be to divide by 5 the amount of promethium chunks required for running 1M spm megabase. That is, changing the promethium recipe to require only 5 promethium chunks instead of 25.

To balance early-game promethium research, the level 1 research speed infinite research would start at 5000 of all science packs rather than 1000.

As a result, a 2M SPM base can run 2M spm promethium at much more than 30 UPS.

I'm aware this is a very simple suggestion, and you’ve probably thought of it already. If it was already posted somewhere, I didn't find it. If anyone have other ideas, feel free to add it to this thread.

[eugenekay]

It is mostly the Asteroid Sprites (which move in space, and thus require movement/collision calculations) that cause performance problems; not the quantity of “Chunk Items” that are spit out by the Asteroid Collectors. You can get more Performance by running the Platform slower through space when harvesting asteroids, to ensure that 100% of the chunks are collected.


UPS Friendly Asteroids reduces the number of Asteroid Sprites, and increases the number of Chunks collected per “Sprite” to make up for it. I suggest using a scaling factor of 2 or 4 - it really helps with large/multiple Platforms.

Good Luck!

[FasterJump]

Even if the number of asteroid sprites is minimized, changing the recipe cost would further divide by 5 the number of ships required (or the width/size of behemoth ships). A player using 10 ships to achieve its SPM would only need 2 to keep up with other science packs, effectively dividing by 5 the UPS/sprite load on UPS. This would improve performance in both cases (even if the player already minimize the number of sprites).

[Rseding91]

Platform asteroid shooting got some improvements in the latest experimental. I’d be interested in seeing the save you’re referring to on the latest stable vs the latest experimental.

[eugenekay]

changing the recipe cost would further divide by 5 the number of ships required (or the width/size of behemoth ships).

It would also increase the "Storage Density" of the Asteroid Chunks within each ship, altering all of the math for Promethium Science prerequisites. One of the primary Challenges with Space Platform scaling is that (by design) the Chunks are inefficient to store in Cargo Bays - so they end up buffered in large belt contraptions... your proposal would cheapen this part of the challenge significantly. The other strategy would be to ship Biter Eggs to the middle of nowhere - which has its own Spoilage-related drawbacks.

[FasterJump]

Platform asteroid shooting got some improvements in the latest experimental. I’d be interested in seeing the save you’re referring to on the latest stable vs the latest experimental.

Nice to hear that promethium harvesting is becoming less of a bottleneck (for people making as much promethium science packs as other science packs). I wouldn't try his savefile myself (I don't want to melt my modest PC - not enough cooling) but it would be interesting to compare.

This is KonTheTurtle's ship blueprint:
https://factoriobin.com/post/1jco1o

His dropbox:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wqitaoax ... 7y5xn&dl=0

[Tertius]

One of the primary Challenges with Space Platform scaling is that (by design) the Chunks are inefficient to store in Cargo Bays - so they end up buffered in large belt contraptions... your proposal would cheapen this part of the challenge significantly.

This challenge isn't that sophisticated or intellectually challenging. If the whole promethium chunk mechanic is a significant contributor to UPS issues for megabases, I'd prefer better UPS over that belt-storage-challenge. In the end we all just pick a blueprint for belt storage, either a self-made one or copied from the internet. It's a blackbox occupying significant space on your platform, nothing more. While I built my blueprint, I was never sure if this is an intended challenge or if I'm just doing something wrong and not realizing it, because I feel it's completely stupid. If you ask me to list game functionality I would rather not have, that's probably the only one on my list. The next not enjoyable thing is the way to create quality items, but quality itself isn't something I want to do away with altogether.

[h.q.droid]

Platform asteroid shooting got some improvements in the latest experimental. I’d be interested in seeing the save you’re referring to on the latest stable vs the latest experimental.

I confirm that. My save (with a big hauler and many asteroid shufflers) is much faster in the latest experimental. Now my hauler has about as much impact as my egg setup. Great optimization!