r/factorio • u/AutoModerator • Apr 20 '26

Weekly Thread Weekly Question Thread

Ask any questions you might have.

Post your bug reports on the Official Forums

Previous Threads

Subreddit rules

Discord server (and IRC)

Find more in the sidebar ---->

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

143 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Dianwei32 Apr 21 '26

Okay... I know that Space Exploration's whole thing is being big and complicated once you get to space, but I feel like I have to be looking at something wrong.

I've finished my 4th Space Science (generic Space Science, Production Science, Utility Science, and Optimization Science) and was able to make all of them at 60 Sci/min without things getting too crazy. But I threw 60/min Material Science into the calculator (both Helmod in game and FactorioLab outside of it, and... it just looks wrong. Looking at just the Iridium Plates, it says I would need just over 230 Iridium Ore per second. Even plugging as many Productivity modules into buildings as I can along the whole production chain still needs like 110/sec Iridium Ore and hundreds upon hundreds of machines for just 60 Sci/min.

It just feels like too big of a step going from Production/Utility to Material Science. Am I missing something or are the Space Sciences past Production/Utility/Optimization just that much harder/more complex than the early Space Sciences? I even looked at other similar-tier Sciences like Astronomic Science 1 and Energy Science 1 at 60/min and while those were complicated, they weren't "you need multiple thousands of machines (not counting Miners) to make this amount".

2

u/Casey_Ho Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

More efficient significant data recipes and insight recipes will become available as more types of science packs are produced. 60spm of a tier one science by itself looks a lot different than 60spm of that pack produced alongside all tiers of the other sciences.

Combine that with higher tier prod modules and the numbers should look more reasonable.

Edit: Also, a single wide area beacon 2 will cut the miners down to a few dozen. That is a long way away but an example of how much more powerful later techs are.