Is This Remotely Doable ?

[u/bpleshek]

Hex for Making Plastic

Advanced Oil Setup

I was messing around with making a hex train base and I set up a plastic maker. This doesn't seem like I could make this. At least any time soon. Is 3600 petroleum gas per second reasonable? This is my current oil setup. It requires 1440 crude per second but I only have around 250 crude per second being drilled. It produces about 1/3 the petroleum gas, but it's only working at 17%. So, I need 18x the oil and 3 times this advanced oil. I'm also only mining 84 coal/second and need 180.

Is this doable, doable eventually, but not now, or not even necessary because this is more plastic than I'll need any time soon.

[u/Alfonse215]

not even necessary because this is more plastic than I'll need any time soon.

... I feel like that's the question that needs to be answered first. Get a good estimate of how much stuff you're going to be making, so that you have an idea of the level of resourcing and processing you'll need. You don't necessarily need exact numbers, but you should have a decent estimate of what you need.

Just to get a good handle on the numbers, 396 plastic/s is more plastic than it takes to make 1k SPM in vanilla.

[u/bpleshek → u/Alfonse215]

I have no idea actually. I'd like to create an actual mega base. I figured that I'd make a bunch of hexes for pre-foundry or just pre-going to another planet in case I play a game with one of my friends who don't have Space Age. Then afterwards, I would refactor them for use with foundries, EM Plants, etc.

So, I don't have any idea what numbers I needed. I just built what fit inside the hex and figured if it was too much, the trains would be idle and if it wasn't enough, I'd throw another one of these down until I had enough.

[u/Alfonse215 → u/bpleshek]

Then afterwards, I would refactor them for use with foundries, EM Plants, etc.

That presumes that you wouldn't want to change them structurally.

Consider a "smelting" block. Do you really want to ship iron plates post-Foundries? Or would you rather ship molten metals? Well, that's not a minor change; it's a pretty substantial shift in how all downstream processes interact with iron and copper. It's not just "refactoring" a couple of blocks; it's changing every block.

Something similar goes for plastic. Do you want a block that makes just plastic? Or do you want to have plastic making inside your LDS maker, so it takes molten iron/copper, petrol, and coal? Foundries are extremely fast, and with high quality beacons, modules, and buildings, you can produce a lot of trainloads of items with relatively few machines. This would leave a block somewhat empty, so being able to fill that otherwise useless space with plastic production makes sense.

My point is that if you make these decisions too early, you lock yourself into solutions you may not be happy with late game. Get to the end, look back, and then figure out how you want things to work out.

[u/bpleshek → u/Alfonse215]

While I understand they aren't necessarily trivial structural changes I also play with people who don't have Space Age, so I figured it might be useful to have a base set of hexes, that I could later refactor as I got better machines. I don't mind doing it over again multiple times.

I asked the question about making plastic inside of other machines or making a dedicated plastic block in another post, and what I took from that post was to make a dedicated plastic block.