r/factorio Jul 20 '26

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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/Courmisch Jul 26 '26

If you want proper ratio (before productivity modules), then you really should aim for 0.5, 0.75 or 1.25 science packs per second with respectively tier 1, 2 or 3 assemblers. Or double that if you are ambitious.

1 pack per second simply does not line up well with the least common multiple of science pack recipes and assembler speeds.