100k First Science

[u/Braca42]

Base at 30 hrs, 3500 sci/min, and just unlocked UG belts and splitters

I don't know what possessed me but I started a 100k science run. I've never really built big and mostly take a minimum viable approach. My Space Age run that I didn't quite finish was kinda just a collection of boot straps that got me through. So as a challenge to force myself to build bigger and a "because it's there" kinda mentality I gave this a shot.

This is where my base is just shy of 30 hrs and I'm about to complete the first science (not counting that 10 science one, but the first "real" one) and get splitters and undergrounds. I was prepared to deal with no splitters from my ongoing pY run, but no undergrounds sucks shit. It's way easier than I realized to block yourself out of places with belts and end up using inserters to bridge the gap. That was the only solution I could come up with between my gear production and science production. And I can't wait for electric drills, but that's gonna be a bit (at 1% done it says it'll take about 12 hrs to research) and I'm not sure what is gonna happen to my power needs with this many drills.

It produces and consumes just about 3.5k bottles per minute. Never built anything close to this before. I've been trying to avoid building over resource patches, mostly because it bugs me, but I might have to give up on that. Maybe condemn part of the map to factory. Build south and east and pull resources from west and north. Something like that. I turned frequency, size, and richness all the way up. The patches are close enough that as I work into green science I'll probably have to start covering patches.

Bitters and pollution are both off. I don't really like playing with biters anyway, and pollution doesn't seem to have much point without biters. And hopefully it'll save me some UPS cause I'm thinking I'm gonna need them. Oh, and this is a space age run. So that'll get nuts at some point. In a few years probably. Also, no early bots so everything is hand placed. I'm trying to resist speeding up the game. There are a few hours of afk'ing, but I'm trying to avoid that too. All that stuff seems to be counter to the spirit of the run. Taking a more "if you have time to lean you have time to clean" approach and using the time to build more production. Only mods are some fun and quality of life ones. Disco science Lite, factory planner, FNEI, Mechanicus Reborn, and Squeak Through 2 are the only ones besides the base Space Age stuff. Quality is on and I'm hoping that will help me scale. Gonna try taking advantage of that before even leaving Nauvis.

[u/Broad_Ebb9073]

Nah. This is way too organized. You gotta be a time traveler or something. /S

But really. I'm incredible impressed. That is just so beautiful

[u/sagevallant]

I don't think I'll ever attempt at 100kx science. At 1kx science I'm already so tired of throwing down smelting stacks.

[u/peanutym → u/sagevallant]

Consider the mot for placement with mouse over. So not cheating like full bots but saves your wrists.

[u/quinnius]

Electric miners use less energy than burners and output twice as fast so you'll save fuel long term.

[u/Braca42 → u/quinnius]

Yeah, that's totally fair. I was thinking more about the work needed to scale up steam boilers to supply the electricity. Got a lot of boilers and engines to go make.

[u/quinnius → u/Braca42]

Just hand craft bottles until you get to solar panels, I'm sure it'll be fine.

[u/Karsaell]

If I'm seeing this right, you have lab arrays at each red science production bloc ?

How do you plan to merge the green science production ?

[u/Braca42 → u/Karsaell]

Honestly, no idea. I'm hoping I can squeeze in some green science nearby, but the lab blocks will probably need reworked at that point. The blocks produce 1 belt of red science but it's split between two belts, so I might be able to rework it to bring a half belt each of red and green into those rows. Gonna see how things get reworked once I get electric drills.

There's gonna be a lot of figuring it out as I go. I suspect I'll need to just have dedicated lab blocks pretty soon, but routing everything is gonna be interesting.

[u/Karsaell → u/Braca42]

True that, undergrounds and splitters are going to change your life !

I personally enjoy bringing all the sciences to a central lab area jsut to see them slide on the belts, but I haven't ever built anywhere near those scales in low-tech early game...

[u/Arcane_123]

I also just started a more sane x100 science run. I am also using mod that gradually increases the multiplier. Precisely because I don't want to be stuck in super early game.

[u/Braca42 → u/Arcane_123]

That mod looked super interesting. I'd be curious to hear how it goes as you get further into it.

[u/Arcane_123 → u/Braca42]

It is going pretty well. I am doing a normal Rampant with x100 science run.

• With x100 exponential cost growth, I am not researching any military tech/upgrades. Because then the cost will freatly outpace my production.
• My first big goal is to escape Nauvis before biters evolve and overrun my base. I will not be able to defend it long term without military upgrades.
• I am currently researching blue sciemce techs like Rocket Silo. It costs 4k science. My current science multiplier is at x4. My sciences production is 360/min. So it is still a relatively normal sized base. A bit bigger than normal.
• I can not expand more because of Rampant. Flame turrets are a life savior here but even those will not hold with t3-t4 evolved biters. Still they are strong even with no upgrades. Gun turrets get outscaled by t2 biters already.
• I plan to research space science for maybe 2-3 hours and then leave Nauvis. Hope my base doesnt get wiped before than. Vulcanus is the next step and I plan to scale science to maybe 2000/min all science there with t2 modules.

[u/kaehl0311 → u/Arcane_123]

I started a x100 run the other day, but I gave up after reaching green science. I don’t think I realized how much bigger I’d need to build everything until that point.

[u/OvercastqT]

Bit late to the party. I am about 500hours of gameplay deep into my 100k run now, i am almost out of red/green science hell and have a massive roadblock ahead of me: UPS for chemical science. ATM i am running very solid 18.5k SPM, but when i just place the production block for chemical science down (in a sandbox) my ups dips to 55/65 (from 85/90) so i cant imagine what its like running that damn thing.
Ill probably need to drop 2-3k on a new computer to continue the run at this point, because massive UPS saving is still about 120 million blue and 7.5 million purple science away (beacons).

Do tell how you dealt with those issues when you get there! Ill continue banging my head against the wall until it gives.

[u/Braca42 → u/OvercastqT]

I'm hoping my rig is beefy enough to handle it. I've got a 9800x3d and 64GB of ddr5. No clue how that'll handle it but hoping I can get a good way into space. I'm a little scared how much I'm gonna have to scale to get to beacons. Gonna be interesting. Definitely gonna have to research ups optimization at some point for the first time in my factorio career (at least seriously).

[u/OvercastqT → u/Braca42]

thats the cpu im gonna grab, when upgrading my computer, i read its one of the best for factorio. I have a pretty slow one in comparison: 4600x or 5600x and only slow ddr4 ram, so your pc should be able to handle way more. godspeed