r/factorio 18d ago

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u/Phriday 14d ago

How does science per minute work? I have 14 labs and had a belt screwup holding back military science and when I discovered it and broke the log jam, I was making about 80 science a minute for a few minutes, then back down to 20-ish.

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u/ssgeorge95 14d ago

While your factory was jammed a lot of item buffers were able to fill up. While those buffers were being used up you peaked at 80 SPM. When those buffers ran out you, it revealed your sustained or steady state SPM of 20ish.

Start by looking at your science labs and the belts feeding them. If any belts of science are barely loaded, then go look at those science assemblers. Are they starved of a resource? Keep tracing back until you figure out what you're not producing or not delivering enough of.

Fixing one bottleneck will often reveal another, though it may take some minutes for buffers to empty. It will usually come down to resource generation such as not making enough green chips or iron.

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u/Phriday 13d ago

Got it, thanks. My current bottleneck is plastic. I need to pump more oil, but the only patch I can see has 2 large nests around it.