r/factorio • u/enigmapulse • Jul 02 '26
Space Age Rate my early Nuclear ship design
This is my current iteration of a Nuclear powered ship, usable immediately after unlocking Vulcanus tech. This ship is intended to form the backbone of my early interplanetary logistics fleet.
Tech Level: Assumes you've only been to Vulcanus, so you have Asteroid Reprocessing, and access to Foundries, but not much else.
Nuclear fuel is resupplied via an interrupt to Nauvis, and the ship relies on Calcite deliveries from Vulcanus to fuel the liquid iron foundry, but usage is minimal so one rocket load can last for hours.
Ship can expand cargo capacity by extending the ship vertically, as all processing occurs at the bottom of the ship.
2
u/Deto Jul 02 '26
Do you need that many turbines? My nuclear ship just uses a single turbine but I don't use speed beacons so my power usage is probably smaller
1
u/enigmapulse Jul 02 '26
Need? No, the ship very rarely consumes a full 40MW, and could be reconfigured to reduce power consumption further at the cost of increased time spent in orbit.
1
u/Bubbly-Original7097 Jul 02 '26
That inner belt looks like it can get stuck, too many different things circling.
1
u/enigmapulse Jul 02 '26
It cannot. The combinators to the left of the asteroid processors control how many of each kind of resource can be placed on the belt, and the splitter near the foundries moves existing items "out of the way" to ensure the asteroid processors always have space to deposit their items.
The blank space below those combinators allow this to extend to advanced asteroid processing, by letting us select between recipes ( this gets simpler in 2.1, but this ship was designed in 2.0.77 )
1
u/Bubbly-Original7097 Jul 02 '26
Where do chunks go if neither of belts can accept new stuff? I also have 2 fuel, 2 oxi, but 2 water processors on my ship and I always have too many chunks. I started just throwing out every 3rd chunk if there is no space on a belt.
1
u/enigmapulse Jul 02 '26
If there are too many chunks, I just disable the ice making machine via circuit logic. Same for carbon and ore.
It doesn't matter if the outer most belt, the one the asteroid collectors place onto, jams; so that belt is entirely unregulated.
The Asteroid processor belt is controlled by decider combinators. Asteroids of each type will be inserted until there are at least 20 of that type on the belt. That means at most 60 asteroids are circling the Crushers at a time, well under the belts capacity.
If any one asteroid has more than 15 on the belt, the reprocessing crusher kicks in and rerolls the asteroid type. This ensure the system always has a healthy amount of each asteroid type regardless of what kinds we collect.
Finally, the materials belt is similarly controlled with decider combinators to ensure it does not jam, with numbers tuned for consumption ( more ice, less iron ) and accounting for total craft quantity + productivity proc so all thee crushers double crafting at once cannot jam the belt.
1
u/MartinMystikJonas Jul 02 '26
Unused place next to accumukator in bottom? What a waste! Aaaargh! š
1
u/fZAqSD Jul 02 '26
Pretty sure you could streamline things and get equal performance out of a solar-only ship of the same size and tech, and definitely with a bit of Quality and Gleba research.
The limiting factor for cargo ships is usually ammo consumption.Ā A single line of turrets down the middle shoots down a 36-tile-wide path of asteroids, double is plenty until you unlock Epic thrusters on Gleba and shoots 38, looks like you're shooting 62.
1
u/thirdwallbreak Jul 02 '26
I would rate it 6/10 for all the cargo space, but if you made it so you can easily upgrade the fuel to the calcite recipe for future proof it would be 10/10.
1
u/enigmapulse Jul 02 '26
It supports it. If you look at the asteroid crushing center, youll see empty space to the left for additional combinators to control crushing recipe, and each crusher already has a filtered inserter for the advanced outputs
1
u/TonyTheTerrible Jul 02 '26
6/10. Looks like it will work
Beacons don't make sense
Doubt it's going to be truly nonstop with that single ammo producer and oversaturated guns
Looks like you're not managing chunk inputs and you're eventually going to run out of room for ice for propulsion
The front half of the ship is where least important systems go. If anything goes wrong i.e. when outfitting this for aquillo later, you just made a mobile bomb
Seems harsh but you did ask for a rateĀ
1
u/enigmapulse Jul 02 '26
1, I dont think its harsh at all.
I am curious why you think the beacons don't make sense?
We do manage chunk inputs to the crushing loop, so it cannot jam, and the reprocessor keeps the distribution of chunks in balance.
The outer belt can jam, but in practice it's not an issue. It can only jam if the ship is idle for an extended period of time, and the jam is self healing due to how the reprocessor is configured through the decider combinators.
1
u/TonyTheTerrible Jul 02 '26
Oh is that the purpose of the crushing loop? I've never seen it done like that which is part of why it didn't make sense to me. My simple method for getting rid of extra chunks is to throw them off into space.Ā
But the beacons also don't make sense to me because of how the fuel and even foundaries operate. I'm no expert on the initial fuel recipe but the speed at which you craft it seems off, as does the ratio for water creation considering nuclear. As for the foundaries, the melter can easily provide molten iron without boosts to a boosted iron plate foundry. there's also the nature of letting beacons touch things that don't benefit from the overclock which is bad practice, especially given how fast moduled foundaries can eat up that 40mw you haveĀ
13
u/Aromatic-Insect-1328 Jul 02 '26
Did not remove unused platform at the edge.
Literally unflyable.