Factorio Forums

It's no secret that there's a *huge* upswing in required materials once you hit yellow and purple science. My question is how big do you typically go before traveling to another planet to get tech to go bigger? I can't seem to find a moment where i seem like I'm "ready" to get off Nauvis.

There's no "correct" answer to this. My personal preferance is to aim for 75 SPM for the six science packs on Nauvis and space science. With T3 assemblers, you'll get really nice ratios for that and you have a decent research progress. If you squeeze in three productivity modules and one speed module, you can even increase the effective output to around 100 SPM without any significant rebuild as long as you produce enough base materials.

To go big, you need the technology and machines unlocked by the other planets anyway. So I start the reconstruction only after I get those. For example, I replaced my larg burner smelter array for iron, copper, and steel plates from my main base and replaced it with "external" foundries after finishing Vulcanus. Instead of delivering the ores with trains I now deliver the plates. Now I'm on Fulgora, so once I'm finished there, I'll move out my green circuit production, etc.

FleenBean wrote: Sat Apr 26, 2025 3:15 am how big do you typically go before traveling to another planet to get tech to go bigger? I can't seem to find a moment where i seem like I'm "ready" to get off Nauvis.

games i've played had 2 "style" :

1)leave nauvis as soon as possible, before purple and yellow, and in such case i won't "go big" in nauvis, i will go "tall", try to use the new tech as soon as they unlock , retrofit as much as possible so it's easy to upgrade quality or modules in a few set of machines rather than in a field of stone furnace. i need to do regular back and forth between planet and value a fast personnal ship. i'm there to try new things ,1 science per second forever style.

2)leave nauvis when i have no more tech to research on Nauvis, i most likely have a large platform with all material required to develop the new planet very fast, drop lots of bots, solar pannel, turrets, there's less back and forth to do between planet, the ship can do it alone for things i would have forgotten, nauvis can be "big", science goes to mining productivity or is paused often time, i'm there to try ALL the things style.

Premu wrote: Sat Apr 26, 2025 9:53 am 75 SPM for the six science packs on Nauvis and space science. With T3 assemblers

I like this as a realistic goal. What ratios do you use with that mod setup that get you closest to this?

Actually, it's a very exact ratio: 5 Red, 6 green, 5 grey, 12 blue, 7 yellow, 7 purple and 3 white will give you exactly 75 SPM for each.

I've been doing "rush to space" most of the time, first Nauvis build is generally small, only about 30 spm without yellow/purple at all. Then when I have foundries, big drills and EM plants I'll do the proper big factory. I hate ripping out large factories for a redesign almost as much as I hate leaving them unoptimized...

Premu wrote: Sat Apr 26, 2025 7:23 pm Actually, it's a very exact ratio: 5 Red, 6 green, 5 grey, 12 blue, 7 yellow, 7 purple and 3 white will give you exactly 75 SPM for each.

This is where I pretty much always start: with grey assemblers it's 30 SPM, blue it's 45, etc., and at some point I'll get around to doubling or tripling from there. (I like perfect ratios.)

If I had to guess on my first SA run I was probably at double that setup on blue assemblers, which is 90 SPM.

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Actually, I just checked: when I first launched a rocket, I was at 45 SPM, when I first went to another planet, I was at 90.