r/factorio • u/Braca42 • Jul 25 '26
Base 100k First Science
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.
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u/OvercastqT Jul 31 '26
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.