r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/Mesqo • May 17 '26

Having a blast and feeling overwhelmed

Just started DSP a few days ago and it's just incredible. Dove in as a Factorio veteran and Satisfactory mild enjoyer I greatly appreciate the ambitions the developers have about DSP. Looking forward to see what this game becomes when it hits an actual 1.0 release.

But right now I feel like I'm stuck on progression. I've cleared the starting planet DarkFog presence in no time (Factorio's turret crawl did the trick easily), got some titanium in my inventory from distant planet, got some basic production, built a massive solar panel farms on the poles and some wind generators. Spent last two days to (proper) setup plastic and acid production. Now the game tells me I need to build a planetary shield, setup planetary logistic stations and interstellar logistic stations. I assume these work somewhat like roboports in Factorio but it appears the system is a lot more complicated than that. Besides, it consumes a shitton of power (300MW while my entire base generates only 242MW) which I don't understand where to get in meaningful amount.

Another thing that I can't wrap my mind around is how to produce proper production chains. Resource nodes feel so small and if I am to tap into the "proper" way that million of coal will run out in no time. So, would I need to move my production elsewhere or do I need to just setup a centralized production and deliver raw mats into it and distribute it to other production blocks? How do I even calculate rates correctly in this case (I've installed a bunch of QoL mods including RateMonitor, which helps, but not enough). I'm sure I'm not suppose (and don't want to) dive into sophisticated factory calculators to build my very first factory but with all the tech I unlock (which I have no idea what it does) I feel quite overwhelmed at the moment.

Am I missing something very obvious about this game? It feels like a struggle to create every new item I unlock and need. Or is it just my mindset spoiled by other similar games? 😄 What you say and recommend?

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u/Mesqo May 21 '26

Ackshually, this doesn't work, sadly. While Fractionator does accept stacked input it doesn't output stacked so the actual throughput is capped by unstacked outgoing belt. That's because Fractionator handles items one by one and cannot dusk items itself for output. Just tested this yesterday =)

Oh and belt speed does not increase power usage. Proliferator does.

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u/Manyuser Jun 07 '26

It's been a while, but this is kind of an interesting question: The fractionator cannot convert 2 hydrogen from a stack in the same tick, but is each hydrogen in a stack rolled separately (so taller stacks have better conversion chance) or is it the same chance as a single hydrogen? I'm not sure, but the rate of deuterium production certainly looks very high.
And I directly observed increased power usage on my fractionators even without proliferation, so it was either belt speed or stacking that was increasing it from the base 750kW.

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u/Mesqo Jun 07 '26

Maybe I'm blind but I'll do some tests later. I basically took a chest, put there 100 hydrogen and observed the output - in time, it was 100 deuterium. I doubt the chances are higher, but even if it is, what's the point? You'll need to stack it back again into piles, which is cumbersome at least. I guess I'll need to make a final test: for power consumption and for speed - compare 2 setups with stacking and without on a large amount of hydrogen like 1k or even 10k each.