Non-quality promethium science ship and design principles for making non-quality ships
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Clever and beautiful constructions, bigger than two chunks
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popthesmart
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Re: Non-quality promethium science ship and design principles for making non-quality ships
This worked amazing, thank you so much!
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inefficient
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Re: Non-quality promethium science ship and design principles for making non-quality ships
Cool, thanks for letting me know! If you run it in 2.1. and have high rail gun speed research, it may not work because it burns through the ammo quicker than its made and then eventually crashes. I havent investigated that yet but will be done within the next 2 weeks or so!
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popthesmart
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Re: Non-quality promethium science ship and design principles for making non-quality ships
I found upgrading to legendary asteroid collectors makes a massive difference lol. So much so that the asteroid belts can get clogged so I added an overflow that dumps them overboard.
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inefficient
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Re: Non-quality promethium science ship and design principles for making non-quality ships
happens! But keep in mind that most things are balanced on the ship, so things may start to break at higher quality! But yeah the increased collecting rates should make the promethium collection much much quicker and you probably will finish way ahead of the schedule for the non quality ship! Resetting the schedule is also easy, just go into an editor map and adjust the constant combinator with new speeds and the decider with new distances and have a look how it goes!- 08-19-2026, 09-31-58.png (240.67 KiB) Viewed 428 times
Re: Non-quality promethium science ship and design principles for making non-quality ships
I don't know when it happens, but sometimes this belt gets clogged and the ship stops due to a lack of water production.
It might not be the best solution, but I have connected a divider and an underground belt with an inserter to the edge of the ship. It's activated when there are more than 100 pieces of ice on the belt.
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- grafik.png (771.54 KiB) Viewed 273 times
It might not be the best solution, but I have connected a divider and an underground belt with an inserter to the edge of the ship. It's activated when there are more than 100 pieces of ice on the belt.
- grafik.png (1.01 MiB) Viewed 273 times
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inefficient
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Re: Non-quality promethium science ship and design principles for making non-quality ships
So I was testing it a bit and have to admit that I dont see the clogging. My guess was that you guys have much higher asteroid productivity? I tested this with asteroid productivity 13 and the recommended research levels in the original post (laser weapon dmg lvl 14, physical projectile dmg lvl 14, stronger explosives lvl 14, asteroid productivity lvl 13, railgun dmg lvl 8, steel plate productivity lvl 13 and railgun shooting speed lvl 8) and then with lvl 30 for asteroid productivity just to see what would happen, but it still worked fine. If asteroids have higher yields naturally it would make the consumption slower and they would accumulate. But this shouldnt be an issue to begin with, because there is a circuit that limits the asteroids that are in the system to what can fit on the belts. The combinator which controls that can be found on the bridge between the turrets and the main body of the ship at the top (see below). I admit though the belt gets quite full at times and maybe this is just a question of statistical fluctuations, so yeah, try lowering the thresholds a bit.
Also, if you use legendary collectors, it will definitely clog. The problem is that I dont limit the loading of asteroids onto the belt, that means everything that is collected will be put on belts immediately and than can overshoot the limit. A work around for this is that you control the unloading from the actual collector by setting filters for the inserter that unloads. An example of this in Tertius's ship or in the blue print below. In the BP you will find that I use am Integer overflow sign change to limit the input in the hub. The overflow is set such that when a certain quantity is reached in the hub (specified in the combinator right to the inserter), it will output negative numbers which cannot be used as filters. In this case it set it to 2147483642, which is 6 asteroids below the overflow value of 2147483648. When what is in the hub and in the combinator adds up to more than 2147483648, it becomes negative because factorio is made in 32bit and the greatest allowed number in a 32bit system is 2147483648. The other combinator limits, in a similar way, what the collectors pick up. In this case I set it such that collects 12 of each. This is a nice way of storing asteroids on the ship for later use without putting them into the hub. But all this was not my idea, I saw other people doing it but I dont know whom to give credit to for this. Anyhow, this is an alternative way of dealing with this. I designed the ship before I was aware of this trick so this would have been a bit better probably. But the decider combinator should do the trick as well.
You can lower the asteroids the ship collects in this combinator and get rid of the overflow. Maybe try 20% less to begin with.
Hope this helps!
Also, if you use legendary collectors, it will definitely clog. The problem is that I dont limit the loading of asteroids onto the belt, that means everything that is collected will be put on belts immediately and than can overshoot the limit. A work around for this is that you control the unloading from the actual collector by setting filters for the inserter that unloads. An example of this in Tertius's ship or in the blue print below. In the BP you will find that I use am Integer overflow sign change to limit the input in the hub. The overflow is set such that when a certain quantity is reached in the hub (specified in the combinator right to the inserter), it will output negative numbers which cannot be used as filters. In this case it set it to 2147483642, which is 6 asteroids below the overflow value of 2147483648. When what is in the hub and in the combinator adds up to more than 2147483648, it becomes negative because factorio is made in 32bit and the greatest allowed number in a 32bit system is 2147483648. The other combinator limits, in a similar way, what the collectors pick up. In this case I set it such that collects 12 of each. This is a nice way of storing asteroids on the ship for later use without putting them into the hub. But all this was not my idea, I saw other people doing it but I dont know whom to give credit to for this. Anyhow, this is an alternative way of dealing with this. I designed the ship before I was aware of this trick so this would have been a bit better probably. But the decider combinator should do the trick as well.
- 08-25-2026, 06-27-18.png (478.95 KiB) Viewed 253 times
You can lower the asteroids the ship collects in this combinator and get rid of the overflow. Maybe try 20% less to begin with.
Hope this helps!
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inefficient
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Re: Non-quality promethium science ship and design principles for making non-quality ships
Ok, here some ships I built throughout the early bits of the game up to the early endgame when you start harvesting promethium on scale. I will also write a bit about the design principles in each ship. In general, all these ship are build with the intend of having them available as early as possible, ie. low tech, and cheap and to be self sufficient for a few hours in orbit. So lets start:
The snail class
Specs:
Tech: at least physical projectile damage and speed lvl 5
Max speed: around 50 km/s averages at 30.
Platforms needed: 259
This ship only needs physical projectile damage and speed lvl 5. So you can use it in achievements runs where you dont use productivity and utility science before going to another planet. It usually is my very first ship to get to a planet and start things there. Its very slow, on average around 30 km/s and the cargo capacity is not great, but enough to get the planet started, you can add more if you want though. The snail is not very sophisticated, and has problems with spikes in asteroid occurrences which leads to collisions once in a while. To combat this I used walls which have impact resistance against collisions so that the platform can take a few hits without things getting destroyed. In terms of design, I tried to move vulnerable parts such as the collectors as far to the inside as possible so that is harder to hit. A single layer of walls is not enough to prevent all damage so I have two.
The jerboa-class
Specs:
Tech: at least physical projectile damage and speed lvl 5
Max speed: 277 km/s with hyperdrive activated
Platforms needed: 729
The jerboa is my main workhorse, cheap, early to get by, and very quick in terms of travel. Again, lower tech needed similar to the snail, no utility or logistics. Notable is a huperdrive that temporally increases speed by force feeding fuel into the thruster beyond what the ship otherwise could sustain. In the early mid game you wont have enough tech to keep the hyperdrive activated at all times, so you have to throttle the thrusters to a level that fuel consumption is at 90% efficiency. There is logic for that. The constant combinator with the S below the hub sets the speed of the ship by controlling fuel levels in the pipes. The combinator has a description so have a look how it works. A few upgrades early that significantly improve travel time are increasing the speed of ammo production with T3 modules, ideally legendary, and calcite fuel so that the hyperdrive can be used longer. The reason for this is that the ship has a logic that makes it wait in orbit until enough ammo and fuel is made. Early on ammo production is very slow, so speeding this up with modules significantly lowers the wait time in orbit. The jerboa will now start demonstrating a few general principles of spaceship design that I found important.
- Cigar-shapes are best for smaller ships. Make sure you have as many thrusters as the ship is wide because space-drag dominates speed-loss in small ships. Drag directly relates to the width of platforms, so narrower is better. Weight is irrelevant up to medium sized platforms (below 5-10k tons) so you can always make it longer early on without any significant drop in speed. https://wiki.factorio.com/Thruster
-The hub is one of the few entities in game that has multiple sides where you can insert and withdraw which makes the logic here very simple to handle. I use the hub as a global processing hub for most consumables on the ship. Many people dont do this, and I agree that it is annoying then to handle items in the hub inventory because of the throughput of items, but it saves a lot of space on the platform that otherwise would be needed for belts and other logistics.
- Without many upgrades ammo becomes a precious resource in most early game space ships because a lot is needed to kill asteroids. To lower ammo consumption on the ship, I deactivate turrets that are not at the front. In flight this is not a problem for small early game ships because you out-speed all asteroids that are heading towards the hub from the front.
- Not all machines are constantly active, so I use accumulators to buffer spikes in energy demand on ship to build fewer solar panels
- storage tanks are kinda needed to have the hyperdrive activated when the calcite fuel crafts are not available. I make use of the hyperdrive for example when I quickly want to get agricultural science back from gleba to increase freshness or if i have an oh shit moment when something goes wrong somewhere and I quickly have to run.
I have 4 more ships to share but this will have to wait a few days. Its ships to reach aquilo, a mid game cargo freighter, an early endgame promethium science ship and a mid endgame promethium science ship.
The snail class
- 09-02-2026, 21-04-25.png (832.47 KiB) Viewed 38 times
Specs:
Tech: at least physical projectile damage and speed lvl 5
Max speed: around 50 km/s averages at 30.
Platforms needed: 259
This ship only needs physical projectile damage and speed lvl 5. So you can use it in achievements runs where you dont use productivity and utility science before going to another planet. It usually is my very first ship to get to a planet and start things there. Its very slow, on average around 30 km/s and the cargo capacity is not great, but enough to get the planet started, you can add more if you want though. The snail is not very sophisticated, and has problems with spikes in asteroid occurrences which leads to collisions once in a while. To combat this I used walls which have impact resistance against collisions so that the platform can take a few hits without things getting destroyed. In terms of design, I tried to move vulnerable parts such as the collectors as far to the inside as possible so that is harder to hit. A single layer of walls is not enough to prevent all damage so I have two.
The jerboa-class
- 09-02-2026, 21-30-53.png (309.41 KiB) Viewed 38 times
Specs:
Tech: at least physical projectile damage and speed lvl 5
Max speed: 277 km/s with hyperdrive activated
Platforms needed: 729
The jerboa is my main workhorse, cheap, early to get by, and very quick in terms of travel. Again, lower tech needed similar to the snail, no utility or logistics. Notable is a huperdrive that temporally increases speed by force feeding fuel into the thruster beyond what the ship otherwise could sustain. In the early mid game you wont have enough tech to keep the hyperdrive activated at all times, so you have to throttle the thrusters to a level that fuel consumption is at 90% efficiency. There is logic for that. The constant combinator with the S below the hub sets the speed of the ship by controlling fuel levels in the pipes. The combinator has a description so have a look how it works. A few upgrades early that significantly improve travel time are increasing the speed of ammo production with T3 modules, ideally legendary, and calcite fuel so that the hyperdrive can be used longer. The reason for this is that the ship has a logic that makes it wait in orbit until enough ammo and fuel is made. Early on ammo production is very slow, so speeding this up with modules significantly lowers the wait time in orbit. The jerboa will now start demonstrating a few general principles of spaceship design that I found important.
- Cigar-shapes are best for smaller ships. Make sure you have as many thrusters as the ship is wide because space-drag dominates speed-loss in small ships. Drag directly relates to the width of platforms, so narrower is better. Weight is irrelevant up to medium sized platforms (below 5-10k tons) so you can always make it longer early on without any significant drop in speed. https://wiki.factorio.com/Thruster
-The hub is one of the few entities in game that has multiple sides where you can insert and withdraw which makes the logic here very simple to handle. I use the hub as a global processing hub for most consumables on the ship. Many people dont do this, and I agree that it is annoying then to handle items in the hub inventory because of the throughput of items, but it saves a lot of space on the platform that otherwise would be needed for belts and other logistics.
- Without many upgrades ammo becomes a precious resource in most early game space ships because a lot is needed to kill asteroids. To lower ammo consumption on the ship, I deactivate turrets that are not at the front. In flight this is not a problem for small early game ships because you out-speed all asteroids that are heading towards the hub from the front.
- Not all machines are constantly active, so I use accumulators to buffer spikes in energy demand on ship to build fewer solar panels
- storage tanks are kinda needed to have the hyperdrive activated when the calcite fuel crafts are not available. I make use of the hyperdrive for example when I quickly want to get agricultural science back from gleba to increase freshness or if i have an oh shit moment when something goes wrong somewhere and I quickly have to run.
I have 4 more ships to share but this will have to wait a few days. Its ships to reach aquilo, a mid game cargo freighter, an early endgame promethium science ship and a mid endgame promethium science ship.