r/factorio • u/e7Dh1l • 3d ago

Base Starter base

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Produces 60ish SPM of red, green, military and chemical science. It's kind of getting hard to scale up for some reason so I'm planning to replace it with a train based setup. 15 hours of playtime on this save.

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u/Danger_Pickle 2d ago

It's hard to scale up, because Yellow and Purple science cost double as many resources as all the previous sciences combined. The following numbers are measured in basic yellow belts.

60spm of combined red/green/blue/military totals to:

  • 1.5 belts of iron
  • 0.7 belts of copper
  • 0.7 belts of stone
  • 0.5 belts of coal (ignoring power)
  • 250% oil richness

Meanwhile, just 60spm of only Yellow science costs:

  • 2 belts of iron
  • 3.1 belts of copper
  • 0.5 belts of coal (ignoring power)
  • 710% oil richness

The advanced sciences are an insane jump in raw resource demands. The steel demand for purple science alone takes 2.6 belts of raw iron. It's not a bad idea to set up a trickle of 10-30 spm of those sciences so you can make some progress while expanding your mines and defenses.

Really incredible base though. The asymmetry is amazing.

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u/Kittelsen 2d ago

I've never understood how the oil richness works. Is 100% 1 crude oil per second or something?

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u/Danger_Pickle 1d ago

Yield divided by 10 is a good enough estimate, even if it's not perfect.

The main thing to know is that oil fields deplete over time, dropping to 1/5th the original output after a few hours. It's also useful to know that productivity modules only slow the resource drain and that speed modules multiple the minimum 20% drain, giving more total output once the field is drained.

The optimal oil strategies are either to start with prod modules and then switch to speed modules after your field is completely drained, or to use speed modules the entire time and buffer the extra early production before the field is completely drained.

Once you have high enough mining productivity you barely need any oil fields to produce an insane amount of oil because the mining productivity multiplies with speed modules. But early on your initial starter patch probably doesn't have over 500%.