Factorio Forums

Since 2.0, a recipe can have a research progress product. https://lua-api.factorio.com/latest/typ ... otype.html

Doc docs specify a research item, but not how it's used. Will the item be part of a research unit? Should the combined products be used as a unit? Should it be the name specific research being made?

+1

I'm kind of puzzled by what it does, too. I've been looking into making a "distributed lab system" - a type of lab where no individual lab needs all the required science packs, as long as all the required science packs are available in the lab system. I'd like to know if this might accomplish what I'm looking for, in a less janky way than having dedicated assembling machines produce some intermediate product, which is sent to an invisible central "master lab".

There would be tradeoffs, where having less science packs in a given lab exponentially increases power requirements, or some other tradeoff. Goal is to create an interesting set of choices, where players can pick and choose where to research what packs. They could research each planet's science pack on the respective planet, but that would be incredibly wasteful in terms of power.

According to some messages on the Discord, it seems that, if the currently researching technology takes the science pack a research progress product references, it will add progress to that technology upon completion.

It isn't clear what happens if a technology takes multiple science packs - can those just not be done w/ a research-progress product? Would the recipe need the exact same ratio of research-progress products as the technology requires (e.g. if researching a tech that needs units of 1 red, 2 green, the recipe would need to have products that add to exactly 1 red, 2 green)? Can multiple recipes be done simultaneously to collectively contribute to the technology? E.g. if you're researching a tech that needs units of 1 red, 2 green, you could have one recipe that yields 1 red's worth of progress, and one recipe that yields 2 green's worth of progress, and then perform both of those recipes simultaneously?
* If it's that last case - what would happen if the recipes were performed out of sync? What about if you have recipes that only yield 1 red-equivalent, or 1 green-equivalent?