Factorio Forums

Ag science freshness is key. Unless you want to do research on Gleba (and miss out on biolab bonuses), you will need to maximize ag science freshness.

So fast platforms, more than one platform, etc..

Here is the simplest approach:
In this screen, science goes right past disabled logistics inserters to be wasted when a requesting platform is not in orbit. When a request exists, only fresh science packs are loaded. All you need to do is wire the inserters to a rocket silo with "read orbital requests" selected, and enable the logistics inserters with ag science > 0

But as your throughput increases, then so does the wasted science packs. This leads to more and more stomper attacks.

You could disable your production lines when ag science is not being requested, and use a larger ship. But what about when you are researching something that doesn't even need ag science?

Here is a solution:

Build an ag science consumption detector on Gleba that prevents the export of ag science to Nauvis when it isn't being consumed.

Copy blueprint
In this screen the signal for ag science orbital requests (bottom pole) is intercepted, and only passed when ag science consumption is detected.

How it works is, orbital requests come in from a rocket silo on the bottom pole. This is fed to a combinator and output to the top pole so you can use that signal to enable your production lines. The 2 wired inserters are fed to an RS latch that sets when science is inserted and spoilage is not removed, and resets when science is inserted and spoilage is removed.

The combinators in the red square are a timer. The bottom left should be set to higher than it takes to fully load a platform with science packs. The top one should be set to an amount higher than the bottom left one, or else the timer will reset without resetting the RS latch. The bottom right combinator is set to higher than the top combinator so that the timer resets every time the set condition is triggered.

All that is left is to truck in the rest of the science packs so it can start detecting!

BTW the set condition is triggered the first time science is loaded into the lab. You can cut / paste the RS latch to fix.

Obviously you would need at least one ag science biochamber operating at all times for the detector to work.

Disabling production lines would be done by wiring up all of the pentapod egg inserters, bioflux inserters and nutrient inserters to enabled when ag science signal is > 0

This isn't the best example, because the nutrients and bioflux are belted. But in this example, those inserters are set to ag science > 0 and unused eggs go straight to the burners
The final piece of the puzzle, remove science from logistic chests when ag science = 0 to ensure the next batch will begin with fresh packs.

The controller could be improved by adding an appropriate timer. Like number of ticks for a platform load +10%. That would also eliminate the time waiting for the science packs to spoil in the lab after transitioning to a non-ag science research. More helpful for a multiple platform setup.

Added a 7.2k tick timer to the setup.