Factorio Forums

I am trying to calculate how much fruit a best case agricultural tower will produce, regardless of the type of fruit.

• The agricultural tower has a grid of 7x7 = 49 "slots" for trees
• The tower itself has a footprint that takes 1 slot away
• The tower needs an input which takes another slot away
• We're left with 47 slots for trees.
• Yumako and jellynut seeds have a growth time of 5 minutes
• Each harvest produces 50 fruit

So this means that - in an optimal environment - we get 47 slots * 50 fruit per harvests each 5 minutes. So that's 2,350 fruit per 5 minutes or 7.83 fruit per second (2,350 / 300 seconds).

Is that the correct way to factor in the time? I feel like there is some logic i'm missing. Or is 7.83 fruit / second actually correct?

That is the best case upper bound, yes.

Considering the tower takes a none zero amount of time to turn/exend/retract to reach a mature tree to harvest, the actual number is probobly slightly lower.

So i currently have 7 agricultural towers running. In the past hour, according to the in-game production statistics, they have produced an average of 3238 yumako fruit per minute, which comes down to 53.96 per second in total or 7.70 /s per tower. With my calculation from the OP, the expected best case production is 7 (towers) x 7.83 / s, which equals 54.81 / s. So i guess it's pretty close, but i'm sure somebody can make it more precise.

SirSmuggler wrote: Wed Dec 11, 2024 6:18 am Considering the tower takes a none zero amount of time to turn/exend/retract to reach a mature tree to harvest, the actual number is probobly slightly lower.

Slightly, but thankfully not enough to REALLY matter. It turns the 'growing time' part of the calculation from 5 minutes, to something like 5 minutes and 3 seconds, accounting for the ~3 seconds between a plant reaching full growth, and a fresh seeds being planted in its place

From 7.8333... down to 7.7557... which would be a 1% drop. RNG says it could be worse, but certainly not enough to base any design changes off of. This is Gleba after all; you ARE accounting for the spoilage, riiiiiight?

Gleba is a beautiful planet, except for two features that absolutely kill this great idea.
1. I've tried starting on Gleba several times and always end up running out of seeds. Ideally the production is 1:1, if there is any problem the production only decreases. I haven't found a way to increase seed production. Solution is only expansion into other farthets regions to get some. So could you give me some advice?
2. Perishable science packages. I prefer not to comment on that.

So is there any solution at least for the first point? Thank you very much for your reply.

I´m sorry for my english

Zabanuch wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2025 8:12 am 1. I've tried starting on Gleba several times and always end up running out of seeds.

Use Biochambers not Assemblers to process the fruit. You get 50% extra seeds from the productivity bonus.

Dealing with the nutrients is a bit of a hassle, but you need to do that anyway for the science. So just use biochambers for everything you can.

Great, I overlooked this possibility.
Thank you very much and have a nice day

Zabanuch wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2025 8:12 am 2. Perishable science packages. I prefer not to comment on that.

I load my science packs into dedicated rocket silos manually so that they can be exported as quickly as possible. Whatever science packs are not consumed on Nauvis are recycled out of existence or thrown off the spaceship that hauls them, which means that at current efficiency of my logistic line, the packs are always consumed at ~80%. Everything on Gleba except for stone is free after all, so i've dediced to stop treating Glebas science as valuable.

Productivity modules work before you get biochambers, or they can work IN biochambers. Remember an Efficiency Module or two in your biochamber to cut nutrient production.

Zabanuch wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2025 8:12 am Gleba is a beautiful planet, except for two features that absolutely kill this great idea.
1. I've tried starting on Gleba several times and always end up running out of seeds. Ideally the production is 1:1, if there is any problem the production only decreases. I haven't found a way to increase seed production. Solution is only expansion into other farthets regions to get some. So could you give me some advice?
2. Perishable science packages. I prefer not to comment on that.

So is there any solution at least for the first point? Thank you very much for your reply.

I´m sorry for my english

Producing more jelly/mash than you need and burn the rest. It's where the seeds come from.

In my 3 Gleba bases so far, the only thing that I always forget and is clogging up the system is: burn excess seeds!
Oh right, on time I messed up the burner's inserters.

J-H wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2025 2:13 pm Productivity modules work before you get biochambers, or they can work IN biochambers. Remember an Efficiency Module or two in your biochamber to cut nutrient production.

Or in many ways better yet just produce plenty of nutrients. Even the basic mash->nutrients recipe provides enough nutrients to run like 18 Biochambers (17 including itself).

I'm not saying it's never appropriate to use eff modules I often use them in the Biochambers that produce "primary nutrients" just so it's more likely that if the fruit supply gets cut off it'll have enough energy in its tank to start up again without needing an external infusion of nutrients, but for a large part using eff modules just results in more nutrients spoiling waiting to be consumed. Also given how cheap it is to produce nutrients there's a good argument for going the other direction with productivity modules and speed beacons which gets quite a lot more more stuff for your fruit and spore emissions.