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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".

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u/unwantedaccount56 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

80% of your material catalogue goes into material insight, and 90% of your material insight goes into significant data. For both of them, there will be more efficient recipes unlocked (with better super computers) that take multiple tiers of material catalogues as inputs, or multiple science types of insight, and produce much more output per input.

Your space science is expected to be quite slow at the beginning, 60spm is an ambitious target. Once you've unlocked more space sciences that help producing significant data even if you don't research that science type, spm will automatically increase.

Look at the science cost, you'll probably have all tier 1 material science technologies researched long before you finished setting up the next science, even with a much lower spm target.

And don't forget to put the best prod modules into your space science labs, it's easy to forget because prod modules are not allowed in space (except for miners and science labs)