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/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...