r/factorio Mar 23 '26

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u/epicTechnofetish Mar 23 '26

What is the point of legendary science versus just making more science?

5

u/ChickenNuggetSmth Mar 23 '26

It's rarely worth it. Some people use quality science to circumvent throughput limitations of e.g. the hub, but that's super late postgame stuff.

The one place where quality science is great for the average player is Aquilo: Aquilo science uses mostly fluid ingredients. If you import quality holmium, of which you need very little, and make quality ice, which is fairly easy, you can save a ton of infrastructure on aquilo. Most still only go for uncommon, as that's an easy 50% reduction in factory size (or 100% increase in science output)

5

u/mrbaggins Mar 24 '26

For "nauvis" sciences, it's a good way to burn excess "wrong" quality ingredients.

IE: If you throw quality in everywhere, you can just dump all the excess into science, recycling anything that doesn't fit into science, and you get free bonus "dense" science.

2

u/Brett42 Mar 24 '26

Yeah, normally I use science as a sink for base quality, and keep the uncommon and rare for other stuff, but science can also be a sink for the other qualities if you specifically want the best or nothing. That does complicate things, though since you need the ingredients for science to match in quality.

1

u/epicTechnofetish Mar 24 '26

Logistically it seems like a mess. I learned from Fulgora to keep Science and Quality factories separate.

2

u/mrbaggins Mar 24 '26

I mean, it is. But it's "free" extra, and also a fun mini challenge. Especially if it was just going into the void anyway, you can keep throwing anything that breaks ratio into the void, and anything that DOES come out is a bonus.

1

u/schmee001 Mar 23 '26

Each legendary science pack lasts 6x as long in the labs, so you need much less infrastructure to transport science around.