Promethium science is too easy to cheese

[CyberCider]

it would be just work... Just building... Just “produce X item and get it from point A to point B”.

Just go do it. Curious to see what you come up with. I'll check back here in a couple of weeks.

I’m not going to waste all that time and effort just to prove my point to some guy online
I mean, what are you even arguing this way? You literally explained in detail exactly what needs to be done. That alone proves my point. All that’s needed to produce all that soil is following simple instructons.
1) Secure lots of territory on Gleba
2) Copy-paste lots of farms
3) Mash all the fruit, and spoil all the mash
4) Ship landfill from Vulcanus
5) Ship biter eggs from Nauvis
6) Turn some spoilage into nutrients
7) You have all the ingredients, craft the soil
8) Burn a lot of excess spoilage

[quineotio]

it would be just work... Just building... Just “produce X item and get it from point A to point B”.

Just go do it. Curious to see what you come up with. I'll check back here in a couple of weeks.

I’m not going to waste all that time and effort just to prove my point to some guy online
I mean, what are you even arguing this way? You literally explained in detail exactly what needs to be done. That alone proves my point. All that’s needed to produce all that soil is following simple instructons.
1) Clear lots of territory on Gleba
2) Copy-paste lots of farms
3) Mash all the fruit, and spoil all the mash
4) Ship stone or landfill from Vulcanus (I forgot which is more rocket efficient)
5) Ship biter eggs from Nauvis or Gleba
6) Use nutrients from spoilage to craft the soils, burn any excess spoilage
7) Done

Oh good, you agree with me that it's a waste of time.

[CyberCider]

Oh good, you agree with me that it's a waste of time.

Different people have different criteria. Yes, you and I consider it a waste of time, and not at all worth it. But many other people would rather do this than make a good ship. You would be surprised by the amount of factorio players that have this irrational fear of the spoilage timer, and the absurd lengths they would go to keep it away from their science. I’ve witnessed the madness myself.

[Zymoran]

Overgrowth soil:
5 seeds
50 spoilage
10 biter eggs
2 normal soil

10x Normal soil:
2 seeds
50 nutrients (10 per overgrowth)
5 landfill (1 per overgrowth)

Forgetting the +100% productivity in both assemblers, aren't we?

1) Clear lots of territory on Gleba

No, you don't even need to clear a lot. 4+4 agricultural towers took me to level 40 research productivity. And promethium science is not my bottleneck

[BraveCaperCat]

Overgrowth soil:
5 seeds
50 spoilage
10 biter eggs
2 normal soil

10x Normal soil:
2 seeds
50 nutrients (10 per overgrowth)
5 landfill (1 per overgrowth)

Forgetting the +100% productivity in both assemblers, aren't we?

1) Clear lots of territory on Gleba

No, you don't even need to clear a lot. 4+4 agricultural towers took me to level 40 research productivity. And promethium science is not my bottleneck

What is the bottleneck then?

Why can't you just store promethium in the space platform hub... Isn't that a worse exploit than just storing it on the belts?

Belts can fit way more promethium in a small space, which is why people use them. But the solution I proposed (short spoil timer on promethium) would counteract all types of storage, so it wouldn’t matter in the end.

How long could the spoil timer for promethium be to remove that version of the cheese?
Is there a way to remove the other cheese?

[CyberCider]

How long could the spoil timer for promethium be to remove that version of the cheese?
Is there a way to remove the other cheese?

I said it all in the original post, but I’ll say it again because I enjoy explaining things to people

1) As long as it’s a significantly shorter timer than the biter eggs have, it’s good. I mean, if someone is able to bring promethium to Nauvis faster than they can bring eggs to space edge, then they definitely deserve the science. But in my head, I specifically imagined someting like 2-5 minutes, similar to an average Gleba ingredient. Just in case, so people don’t get the idea of bringing both eggs and promethium to Aquilo. That sounds like a funny idea, but I imagine it would get tiring if people started overusing it. Promethium only needs to travel from the asteroid collector to the ship core, which is certainly not enough time to spoil. So a very short timer is ok.
2) Make soils recycle to themselves, instead of returning their ingredients. Landfill already behaves this way, so it even makes sense logically.

[Zymoran]

What is the bottleneck then?

Space science because I'm too lazy to expand my single assembler space science platform, and spamming legendary speed beacons around it only take it that far...

[BraveCaperCat]

Promethium is an unstable radioactive element

I couldn't find anything in the space age locale files, so since when is Promethium radioactive, unstable and an element?

[CyberCider]

I couldn't find anything in the space age locale files, so since when is Promethium radioactive, unstable and an element?

IMG_2829.jpeg (749.31 KiB) Viewed 1407 times

Don’t worry, it took me a while too

[mrvn]

Maybe the recycler recipes should not include any item with freshness unless the input also has freshness. That would take care of the exploit for storing biter eggs that don't spoil and any other spoilage avoidance in general.

As for storing stuff on belts. I think that's not an exploit. Just may be a denser way to store stuff than in the hub. I haven't gotten to the promethium science yet but I assumed I would go out and collect the stuff and then bring it back to Nauvis to process it with some biter eggs locally. Isn't that what you are supposed to do? After all you have to place the Biolabs on Nauvis too so ultimately your science packs need to go to Nauvis anyway.

[CyberCider]

Maybe the recycler recipes should not include any item with freshness unless the input also has freshness. That would take care of the exploit for storing biter eggs that don't spoil and any other spoilage avoidance in general.

As for storing stuff on belts. I think that's not an exploit. Just may be a denser way to store stuff than in the hub. I haven't gotten to the promethium science yet but I assumed I would go out and collect the stuff and then bring it back to Nauvis to process it with some biter eggs locally. Isn't that what you are supposed to do? After all you have to place the Biolabs on Nauvis too so ultimately your science packs need to go to Nauvis anyway.

See, the fact that people are assuming that this is what you’re supposed to do just makes me sad. Have you ever wondered why promethium is so hard to store in normal storage that the developers expected people to use? Are you really satisfied with the ultimate science pack being so simple to create? Your ultimate space platform being just a resource hauler? Sure, it would have to be a big ship with big guns, but that’s simple brute force. Anyone can do brute force. No, it was supposed to be a puzzle: A ship fast as fast as possible so that the biter eggs have a lot of time left while in promethium space. But when it gets there, it also needs to survive long enough to craft the packs. So, it needs both speed and firepower.

[mrvn]

Maybe the recycler recipes should not include any item with freshness unless the input also has freshness. That would take care of the exploit for storing biter eggs that don't spoil and any other spoilage avoidance in general.

As for storing stuff on belts. I think that's not an exploit. Just may be a denser way to store stuff than in the hub. I haven't gotten to the promethium science yet but I assumed I would go out and collect the stuff and then bring it back to Nauvis to process it with some biter eggs locally. Isn't that what you are supposed to do? After all you have to place the Biolabs on Nauvis too so ultimately your science packs need to go to Nauvis anyway.

See, the fact that people are assuming that this is what you’re supposed to do just makes me sad. Are you really satisfied with the ultimate science pack being so simple to create? Your ultimate space platform being just a resource hauler? Sure, it would have to be a big ship with big guns, but that’s simple brute force. Anyone can do brute force. No, it was supposed to be a puzzle: You want to make a ship fast as fast as possible so that the biter eggs have a lot of time left while in promethium space. But to get there, you need to reach Aquilo and then solar system edge, which are both incredibly dangerous. So, you’d need both speed and firepower.

Francly I'm disappointed with all the space age science packs in that regard. I have one building to produce each new science pack. One assembler in space, one Electromagnetic facility on Fulgora, one Biochamber on Gleba, ... and I've gotten the "researched all techs" achievment now before finishing the game because I simply had nothing else to research. The science packs are way too easy to produce compared to the pre space science packs. There is no incentive to scale up production. You don't even need more than the most basic spaceship: One truster, basic fuel recipe, no modules, beacons or quality. That ship is plenty fast enough to haul science packs around at it's ~50km/s.

My plan for going to the outer edge is actually to go slower. More time to shoot down asteroids if you go slower, more time to collect the chunks left over. More time to produce replacement ammo. And if I need more throughput then why not simply build a second ship?

[CyberCider]

My plan for going to the outer edge is actually to go slower. More time to shoot down asteroids if you go slower, more time to collect the chunks left over. More time to produce replacement ammo. And if I need more throughput then why not simply build a second ship?

See, that’s where the challenge was supposed to be. You want to go slower, but you need to go faster if you want as many science packs as possible. So a ship would have to be pushed to its limits in order to work in such conditions.
But how are people expected to give this a shot, when there’s a path of less resistance provided to them?

You made a perfectly valid criticism, by the way, I actually agree to some degree. Personally, I’m particularly not a fan of the absurd calcite richness on Vulcanus, or the insane resource drain reduction of quality drills. If you check the Vulcanus fff, you will see that they actually used to be weaker than they are now. The buff was completely unnecessary, in my opinion, especially considering the cheapened mining productivity tech. But, for complaints like these, thankfully settings exist. I can turn down ore richness, and you can turn up science costs.

[mrvn]

I agree with you that there is no incentive to doing so.

[Drundia]

it would be just work... Just building... Just “produce X item and get it from point A to point B”.

Just go do it. Curious to see what you come up with. I'll check back here in a couple of weeks.

I’m not going to waste all that time and effort just to prove my point to some guy online
I mean, what are you even arguing this way? You literally explained in detail exactly what needs to be done. That alone proves my point. All that’s needed to produce all that soil is following simple instructons.
1) Secure lots of territory on Gleba
2) Copy-paste lots of farms
3) Mash all the fruit, and spoil all the mash
4) Ship landfill from Vulcanus
5) Ship biter eggs from Nauvis
6) Use nutrients from spoilage to craft the soils
7) Burn a lot of excess spoilage
8) Done

How about this:
1) Paste a working ship design.

This is probably the (ch)easiest way to do this challenge. Now these are some really simple instructions. And basically why do you see an option to copy-paste lots of farms but completely disregard an ability to copy-paste a ship.

Or wait, I have another one:
1) Use minimum possible spoiling rate of 10% so that the eggs last for 5 hours.

And the considering that promethium science is basically useless in every possible way except getting an achievement I have another one:
1) Load someone else's game.

[BraveCaperCat]

I couldn't find anything in the space age locale files, so since when is Promethium radioactive, unstable and an element?

IMG_2829.jpeg

Don’t worry, it took me a while too

Wow, there even seems to be a few isotopes of promethium with about 3-5 minute half-lifes. Not exactly what you were talking about, but close!

[BraveCaperCat]

Another possible solution might be to limit promethium science pack crafting to pressure-less environments, such as space. Even with mods which add pressure-less planets, biolabs have to be built on nauvis and biter eggs still have to be crafted in captive biter spawners, which themselves have to be on nauvis. This means that at least some form of space travel must be necessary even if promethium asteroid chunks could be harvested in nauvis orbit. Obviously, that isn't the case - you need to travel into interstellar space just to obtain the promethium asteroid chunks, which then have to be returned to nauvis just to be used in science. This doesn't prevent the biter egg cheese, but (I'm pretty sure) there's only one real solution to that.

[Morganite]

So let me see if I've got this straight.

Currently, you can take the promethium to the eggs or the eggs to the promethium. There are multiple methods for doing each of these things, with different advantages and disadvantage based on player preferences, mods in use, and so forth.

Some people think some of those methods shouldn't work, with multiple competing visions for just -how- they shouldn't work, and what might work instead.

Sounds like a job for mods to me? There's even already one for decaying promethium, though it adds some other stuff that may or may not be to any particular individuals liking.

[mrvn]

Another possible solution might be to limit promethium science pack crafting to pressure-less environments, such as space. Even with mods which add pressure-less planets, biolabs have to be built on nauvis and biter eggs still have to be crafted in captive biter spawners, which themselves have to be on nauvis. This means that at least some form of space travel must be necessary even if promethium asteroid chunks could be harvested in nauvis orbit. Obviously, that isn't the case - you need to travel into interstellar space just to obtain the promethium asteroid chunks, which then have to be returned to nauvis just to be used in science. This doesn't prevent the biter egg cheese, but (I'm pretty sure) there's only one real solution to that.

You would still move the promethium to Nauvis orbit and then send up eggs as needed. They won't spoil during a rocket launch.

[BraveCaperCat]

Another possible solution might be to limit promethium science pack crafting to pressure-less environments, such as space. Even with mods which add pressure-less planets, biolabs have to be built on nauvis and biter eggs still have to be crafted in captive biter spawners, which themselves have to be on nauvis. This means that at least some form of space travel must be necessary even if promethium asteroid chunks could be harvested in nauvis orbit. Obviously, that isn't the case - you need to travel into interstellar space just to obtain the promethium asteroid chunks, which then have to be returned to nauvis just to be used in science. This doesn't prevent the biter egg cheese, but (I'm pretty sure) there's only one real solution to that.

You would still move the promethium to Nauvis orbit and then send up eggs as needed. They won't spoil during a rocket launch.

Yes, that's why I said "possible solution" and not "solution" as well as "might" and not "is".