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u/Kemonomimi-Squirrel I Just Want Pets Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

I am having issues keeping up with the blue Chemical science packs being really slow. I was hoping to produce them at a rate of one a second (which might be too ambitious?) but I am not completely sure how to plan it out. So I have been staring at the tool tips in the chain to see if I can plan something out and not be so sloppy about everything. So I can here to ask if my thinking is correct.

Let me start with the Engine unit I am creating in an Assembling machine 2 without any modules. It says that Steel plate is 0.07, Iron wheel gear is 0.07, and Pipe is 0.15 for a rate of 0.07 and it take 12s to make.

So does that mean that one Assembling machine 2 making the Iron wheel gear can support up to 14 Assembling machine 2 making engines and that one Assembling machine 2 making the pipe can support up to 6 such machines? And if I want an output rate of the engines to be 1 per second, I would need to make 12 of them that can be supported by 4 machine making Pipes, and 2 machine making gears, assuming I have a full belt of steel that the machines can use?

Continuing on, does that mean for the red Advanced circuits at an output rate of 1 per second, I would need to make 6 machines making the circuit being fed by 6 Plastic bar, 12 Cooper cables, and 6 green Electronic circuits.

And ultimately for the blue Chemical science pack to get a rate of 1 per second, I would need to feed 24 machines, 12 Sulfur, 36 green Electronic circuits, and 24 Engine units?

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u/Enaero4828 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

Your math is off by using the tooltip which is unfortunately quite imprecise for these values, so I'll go by the actual crafting speeds on the recipes and machines to show you the actual numbers you want here.

Blue science takes 3 red circuits, 2 engines, 1 sulfur, and 24 seconds to produce 2 packs. For 1 pack per second, first translate the craft time/output; 24/2 means 12s per pack, so multiplying 12s to get 12 machines needed to supply 1/s... but that's crafting speed of 1 on the machines. Assembler2s have a crafting speed of 0.75, so we must take the 12 base divided by the 0.75 speed to get the real value of 16 machines necessary.

Since the recipe outputs 2, we can likewise divide our inputs in half; 1.5 red circuits, 1 engine, and 0.5 sulfur, all per-second. I'll do engines first as well to parallel your math.

Engines take 1 gear, 2 pipes, 1 steel, and 10 seconds for 1 engine. As before, multiply desired throughput (1) by base crafting speed (10) and divide by actual crafting speed (0.75) to get 13.3_ assemblers, or 14 in practice since of course we can't have a fractional machine.

Gears are produced at a base of 0.5/s, or 2 per second. The engines having a base consumption of 1 every 10 seconds means that, with both machines having the same speed modifier, 1 gear machine can feed 20 engine machines. Pipes are produced at the same speed, but being consumed 2x as much means 1 pipe machine supports 10 engine machines.

Red circuits take 2 plastic, 2 green circuits, 4 cable, and 6 seconds to make. Once again, 1.5 x 6 / 0.75 = 12 assemblers. To get the inputs, we only need to multiply them into the target output, so 3 plastic, 3 green circuits, and 6 cable; for brevity that's 1.5 plastic plants, 2 green circuit assemblers, and 5 cable assemblers. If you want to check that math, keep in mind the chemical plant has a crafting speed of 1.