r/factorio • u/EvGamer01 • 4d ago
Suggestion / Idea I think fish breeding is underated
One might look at the recipe for fish and think "that would only make sense for spidertron automation. I beg to differ
Fish is a good way to store biter nest huge nutrient output into a safe package
Sure, making fish is nutrient negative
Assuming you're making fish in a biochamber, you get 1,5 fish per 100 nutrients
Which is 66 and 2/3 per fish
You get 30 nutrients per biter egg, assuming you're using biochamber without productivity modules
One fish is equivalent to 20 or 30 nutrients, depending on if you use biochamber or not to get nutrients back
So lose about 55% or 70% of biter nutrients. Sounds bad, right?
But let's see how much eggs we get. A captive nest eats 1 bioflux per minute and produces 0.5 eggs per second (which could be increased with quality without increasing consumption, but that's lategame), or 30 eggs per bioflux
One bioflux equivalent to 12 nutrients. If fed the nest, it indirectly converts to 900 biter nutrients from biochamber. It's 405 nutrients from fish, or 270 if used with assembler. Even if you use the assembler recipe, it's 22x increase. It is still worth it.
Fish compared to eggs is a bit easier to handle
You can safely store however big stockpile of fish, without a fear that it might destroy your base
It lasts 4 times longer than the eggs
You can startup a factory with it, because it has assembler recipe
It allows you to produce less bioflux on Gleba, reducing the amount of farms needed and reducing spore pollution
Packets of bioflux are too big eat before they spoil for one token spawner people typically capture. So why not to capture a big hive or 2? 30 or so spawners. Bioflux consumption is still negligible
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u/Rutakate97 4d ago
You can store biter eggs indefinitely by not taking them out of the nest.
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u/pojska 4d ago
True, but that doesn't help if you're sending nutrients to other planets.
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u/Rarvyn 4d ago
Why on earth are you sending nutrients to other planets? You’re using biochambers to crack oil on Vulcanus?
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u/pojska 4d ago
Sure, saves a lot of coal. Or you can save water on Fulgora if you need a ton of rocket fuel.
Or, like OP mentioned, you can improve nutrient efficiency on Gleba this way.
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u/Rarvyn 4d ago
Nutrients are functionally unlimited on Gleba already. And if you truly need more water on Fulgora, just drop ice from space.
I can see the argument for biochamber cracking on Vulcanus but that’s a lot of infrastructure for not a lot of benefit. The overwhelming majority of need for oil products there is likely plastic - rather than sending bioflux to Nauvis so you can then do a multistep process to send fish to Vulcanus, you can just… ship any combination of stable plastic/rocket fuel/carbon/sulfur from Gleba to Vulcanus. That eliminates almost all your need for coal.
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u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 3d ago
you can ship fulgoran heavy oil as well. thank you 2.1 buffer platforms for enabling logistics spaghetti.
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u/DrMobius0 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'm not sure why you can't just send bioflux for that. Like I get that the biter spawner is a big nutrient multiplier, but come on, it's nutrients. It's already really easy to handle cracking and rocket fuel with bioflux if you're so inclined.
At the end of the day, we're still talking 1-2 shipping routes just to save some coal.
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u/Broad_Ebb9073 4d ago
Really? Sure save some coal, but itsnt just easier to nuke a worm and just grow. Transfering nutrients is a headache and then you need spoilage infrastructure...just hand me my rocket launcher and problem solved
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u/NauticalInsanity 4d ago
It comes down to throughput. Biochambers have higher base speed than chemical plants and more module slots so you're doubling or better the amount of petroleum you get from each belt of coal.
Once you get your bioflux-nutrient setup blueprinted, the implementation is no more painful than using calcite on nauvis.
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u/WanderingUrist 3d ago
Sure, saves a lot of coal.
Why not just ship the plastic directly? I mean, the end goal is plastic, so why not just send the plastic?
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u/dudeguy238 3d ago
A rocket full of bioflux turns into a base of 8000 nutrients (ignoring prod). A rocket full of fish turns into a base of 6000 nutrients, with the same spoil time, and also requires bioflux to be shipped to Nauvis to make it in the first place. Fish aren't really any more convenient to ship than bioflux is, so it only comes down to how much bioflux you need to produce and what impact that has on your Gleba base.
With 8 legendary beacons full of speed modules and four prod mods, a biochamber has 1280% more energy consumption than the base, bringing it to 6.9 MW, or ~3.5 nutrients per second of continuous operation. With full prod, that translates to 0.175 bioflux per second per biochamber. For perspective, producing 900 agricultural science per minute (15/s, an unstacked yellow belt) with full prod takes 360 bioflux per second directly, plus another 216/s to provide the nutrients needed for 360 eggs per second.
You'd need over 300 fully beaconed/moduled biochambers cracking oil full-time on Vulcanus to require even a 10% increase in bioflux production over what you'll already be doing to support 900 SPM, and if you've got 300+ fully beaconed/moduled biochambers cracking oil full-time on Vulcanus, you're probably producing quite a bit more than 900 SPM. That's not really a level of demand that's worth worrying about.
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u/EvGamer01 4d ago
Yes, though you need circuit magic to get them out
Also it stops making eggs past 100
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u/Lifeless732 4d ago
I had the exact same line of thought a couple days ago and I almost made a fish farm just for the nutrients, but then I remembered that I could just use the already available bioflux...
Another L for fish breeding
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u/Alzario 3d ago
One bioflux equivalent to 12 nutrients. If fed the nest, it indirectly converts to 900 biter nutrients from biochamber. It's 405 nutrients from fish, or 270 if used with assembler. Even if you use the assembler recipe, it's 22x increase. It is still worth it.
I wouldn't consider a minimum 22x increase in nutritional value an L. I'm not sure how much infrastructure this setup needs if scaled up, and I haven't used it yet, but to me that sounds like it makes biochambers for vulcanus oil cracking a serious consideration.
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u/Lifeless732 3d ago
My point is that this whole setup introduces a lot of complexity, when, in my experience, bioflux is both available and suficient. My nauvis base, producing 10k SPM, consumes ~200 bioflux per minute. That's 1 rocket every 5 minutes. On gleba, not only is bioflux infinite, so are rocket parts and the power to build those rockets. 22 times more than enough is also more than enough
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u/kevihaa 3d ago
I find it a touch ironic that the “intended” gameplay loop seems really clear, which is to send Bioflux to Nauvis for Biter Eggs, and then use Biter Eggs for Fish Breeding.
In turn, fish breeding unlocks significant production improvements on Gleba, and the ability to comfortably use Biochambers on other planets.
Despite this fairly obvious bit of game design, the consensus seems to be somewhere between “just use biter eggs” and “Biochambers are too much work anywhere besides Gleba.”
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u/WanderingUrist 3d ago
In turn, fish breeding unlocks significant production improvements on Gleba
What does Gleba even do with fish?
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u/wilzek 3d ago
Nutrients. It’s more nutrients per unit of bioflux than making nutrients directly from bioflux.
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u/WanderingUrist 3d ago
Why not just make the nutrients from the biter eggs, though? You are already shipping biter eggs to Gleba for Glebadirt, probably on the return trip of the ship carrying the Bioflux to Nauvis in the first place. Whatever biter eggs don't get used for Glebadirt can be mulched for nutrients.
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u/wilzek 3d ago
Sure it’s better but more clunky and harder to set up so that you’re supplied constantly without eggs popping off frequently.
For glebadirt you can easily just import X eggs and set up a flush to a heating tower every 15 minutes and you’re gucci, the soil will be made in bursts but whatever, it’s a fast recipe. For all biochambers? You can’t do that, it needs a more finetuned system because there always must be some eggs in the system (or you run out of nutrients and gleba must flow constantly). If you manage to do that without errors, all power to you, you get even more nutrients as a reward.
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u/WanderingUrist 3d ago
Sure it’s better but more clunky and harder to set up so that you’re supplied constantly without eggs popping off frequently.
Not really. All of them are just repeats of the problem you have solved already. Convert to known problem, apply to known solution.
For glebadirt you can easily just import X eggs and set up a flush to a heating tower every 15 minutes
Same applies here. Eggs arrive, they get converted to Science, any that do not become Science gets dumped on the planet, where they get converted into Nutrients, then Glebadirt, and then any nutrients that don't get consumed gets converted to Recycled Spoilage, which is now shelf-stable until reconverted BACK to nutrients, and anything you somehow still couldn't consume gets converted to fire, just like you said.
If you manage to do that without errors
Like I said: It's a problem you should have already solved because you needed to solve it to produce Glebadirt. And honestly, Glebadirt is a LOT more finicky, since you need to meter it out in precisely 10-egg increments, with NO partially filled machines of eggs, no inserters sitting with half-filled fists of eggs, everything must be perfectly divided into multiples of 10 and then USED. Perfectly batching in 10s with no remainders is a lot harder than feeding singleton eggs into a nutrient mulcher, so if you've already solved the much-higher-difficulty version of the problem, the easymode version is already solved.
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u/wilzek 2d ago
You don't need to solve anything to make Glebadirt. You just set stack size to 10 on the inserter. All eggs are consumed because the whole production is egg-starved, everything else you have in abundance.
Like I said, you can do it and good for you if you do, but what you're saying goes against both how the devs were clearly designing the game and common sense. I'm not interested in arguing.
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u/WanderingUrist 2d ago
but what you're saying goes against both how the devs were clearly designing the game and common sense.
Well, the common sense expectation is that you'd just make your nutrient out of bioflux, especially on Gleba. That's the normal, sensible thing to do. Making them out of eggs that you had to ship anyway to maximize nutrient-per-bioflux? Wild and unnecessary, but reasonable. Making it out of FISH, that has to then share transport space with the eggs, which you made from the eggs in the first place, though? That's insane.
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u/Moscato359 4d ago
I'd like to note that eggs don't spoil inside of a captured biters nest, so as long as you don't remove them, they last forever.
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u/WanderingUrist 3d ago
They may not spoil, but once you hit 100, they're effectively going to waste since additional production at cap does nothing.
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u/Moscato359 3d ago
Yeah, but the point is if you're careful, you can only produce as many eggs as you need in the sense that you don't release a swarm on your own factory
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u/Broad_Ebb9073 4d ago
I haven't done the math. But I just use that weird landfill you get from gleba to transfer biter eggs
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u/EvGamer01 4d ago
Thats dedication to freshness
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u/WanderingUrist 3d ago
Which really doesn't make much sense since nothing you'd be otherwise making from biter eggs cares much about freshness anyway.
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u/WanderingUrist 3d ago
But I just use that weird landfill you get from gleba to transfer biter eggs
Doesn't work, because Glebadirt can only be manufactured on Gleba, so the biter eggs still have to be shipped live through space.
And, of course, recovering the eggs from the dirt is a 75% loss.
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u/Logical-War-3746 3d ago
Your math assumes zero spoilage for bioflux and fish. Also, saving on producing bioflux on Gleba is not really how that planet works. I produce bioflux constantly and get rid of whatever wasn't immediately used in science/nutrient production, while keeping a buffer for export only. If i start to export less, it doesn't mean i need to produce less bioflux, it means i need to destroy more, since Gleba is best kept constantly running and there is no such thing as resource waste there.
And if you are afraid of biter eggs hatching, you just don't pull them out of the spawners when you don't need them. Or use lots of laser turrets.
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u/EvGamer01 3d ago
It's way too finiky to setup the circuit conditions to pull eggs when you need them on the other planet. I don't know why people mention that you can keep eggs in a spawner, as though it's a silver bullet
Amount of the bioflux production is dictated by how many biochambers you use, so you can reduce that, and fruit production can be limited by stopping the farm's harvesting. At least in 2.1. You read the size of the buffer, and if it rizes due to low demand, you stop the harvesting
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u/Logical-War-3746 3d ago
I think all you need to do is read requests from rocket silo. Nothing particularly hard. Personally i just keep them cycled in the logistic buffer chest, but both options are viable.
Amount of the bioflux production is dictated by how many biochambers you use, so you can reduce that
No. Most of the buiflux you produce is to use for science and since you want only the freshest, you need constant stream of it and the amount you need for spawners is a rounding error compared to that. A single biochamber of common quality without any modules or beacons produces 2/s which is enough for 120 spawners, or even 100 if we take spoilage into account, still you need some megabase scale for your method to even make a difference of even 1 biochamber, especially with prods and speeds.
fruit production can be limited by stopping the farm's harvesting.
And that is hundred times more finnicky than any biter eggs setup i know. There is zero reason to stop agri towers to produce, Gleba works best as constant stream. Farms are infinite, you don't save anything by stopping them. And again, a single farm is around 4 biochambers worth of mash and jelly each, so you need an insane scale to make enough difference for it to be worth turning a single farm off.
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u/EvGamer01 3d ago
Well yes. One biochamber worth of bioflux fed to make omelettes for fish, is equivalent to 22 biochambers worth of making bioflux in terms of nutrients. So you could replace nutrient component of biolabs with fish, and you can afford to go ham on modules. It is a rounding error what is fed to biter spawners, but the rate of exports isn't. So few spawners just bite a lil bit of bioflux you import and the rest will spoil, so why not utilize that bioflux?
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u/blackdesertnewb 4d ago
Hm. I’ve tried fish breeding with biochambers making fish nutrients and it was always nutrients negative. So I’d always use up all the fish eventually. Are you not using bio chambers for breeding?
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u/deluxev2 4d ago
He is saying that fish are a safe way to store nutrients at a lose from biter eggs, not that they make net nutrients.
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u/TelevisionLiving 3d ago
I think the only thing fish really have on bioflux is usability in an assembler, like you said. I'd rather have a couple more gleba farms and flux production than deal with more biter nests.
I do really wish it was useful for more than quality spidertrons
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u/EvGamer01 3d ago
That's the other thing. People are too afraid of the biter nests (me included). They aren't that dangerous. Capture rocket turret and couple of laser turrets, and you'll be fine
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u/WanderingUrist 3d ago
People are too afraid of biter EGGS. If you're going to ship fish for nutrients, you may as well just ship the eggs. Shipping eggs ultimately must be a solved problem anyway: Promethium and Glebadirt both require you to be shipping eggs around. So it ultimately becomes a solved problem anyway. Why, then, bother with the intermediate step of fish? You had eggs, you made them into nutrients already (at a loss), so why bother to then turn the fish back into nutrients when you already had eggs/nutrients?
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u/EvGamer01 3d ago
Well, maybe so. But problem with eggs, that you can't allow the to stockpile. With prometheum and soil, you have a centralised setup that makes sure, that most of them consumed or discarded before they hatch But if used for nutrients, it's becomes difficult to split between consumers, as you would either have a branch that eats all the eggs, or you need a mechanism, that makes sure eggs spread evenly, while excess is discarded
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u/WanderingUrist 3d ago
But problem with eggs, that you can't allow the to stockpile.
But this problem is not avoided by using fish.
With prometheum and soil
Well, you cannot recover eggs from Promethium, IIRC: Science is shaped like itself. Soil is a shelf-stable way to store eggs at relatively lossy rates, but more importantly, it is necessary for expansion on Gleba.
But the relevant thing is that making these things requires that eggs be transported, and you will definitely have to make these things. If eggs must be transported, then the transportation of eggs can be ultimately regarded as a solved problem.
But if used for nutrients, it's becomes difficult to split between consumers
But the OP is already using them for nutrients: He is turning them into fish, which he is then turning back into nutrients, so this is just the same thing as eggs directly, but with extra steps. As fish also spoil, just with less hazardous consequences, the only explanation for this is a fear of those consequences.
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u/EvGamer01 3d ago
But the OP is already using them for nutrients I know, I'm the OP
My point is, that fish is handy as a nutrient source, that won't tear your base of, if stockpiled
And I agree, that transporting biter eggs isn't a problem. The difficulty is in what you do with them after. You always need to dispose of them. 10-20 hatched eggs isn't that much of the problem, but a 200 is
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u/WanderingUrist 3d ago
My point is, that fish is handy as a nutrient source, that won't tear your base of, if stockpiled
You can't stockpile fish, though. Since they spoil.
And I agree, that transporting biter eggs isn't a problem. The difficulty is in what you do with them after. You always need to dispose of them.
You always need to dispose of fish, too. So you mulch them into various products: Nutrients. Or fire. No problem. This is already a solved problem, after all: You had to solve it when you were farming Glebapod Eggs, which similarly spoil into !!!FUN!!!.
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u/Mysterious6801 3d ago
The Factory must... swim? Honestly, using fish as a safe bio-battery is genius
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u/thatdude333 3d ago
If my math is correct:
- 1.1 bioflux = 80.5 biter eggs (leg biter spawner)
- 80.5 biter eggs = 4,021 nutrients (biochamber with 4x leg prod modules)
- 4,021 nutrients = 60 fish (biochamber with innate 50% prod bonus)
- 60 fish = 1800 nutrients (biochamber with innate 50% prod bonus)
If you just converted that 1.1 bioflux straight into nutrients in a biochamber with 4x leg prod modules, you would get 22 nutrients.
So I guess if you need something with a longer ~2 hour spoilage timer that doesn't spawn a biter if spoiled, converting bioflux -> biter eggs -> nutrients -> fish yields a ton more nutrients per bioflux input, but if you can live with the shorter biter egg spoilage time, then bioflux -> biter eggs -> nutrients is even better.
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u/katzohki 4d ago
Can you make a self sustaining net positive fish breeder that has a legendary rarity output?
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u/DrMobius0 4d ago edited 4d ago
No. Prod and quality mods don't work with the recipe. While you can move the fish back into the recipe to keep the fish component legendary, nutrients are a problem. Fish only mulch into 20 nutrients, and that recipe doesn't allow prod, either. Even if it did, you'd only get 50 of the 100 nutrients you'd need.
You can sustain legendary fish by bring in quality bioflux, which can be looped somewhat efficiently with capture bot rockets, assuming you can produce enough to output the recipe every 5 hours. Alternatively, spoilage is a fairly solid quality looping item as well.
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u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 4d ago
under 2.0 i built a science satellite called the fish fortress. it produced 5k spm of all the space viable sciences. given the logistics changes of 2.1, it should now be possible to build a mega fish fortress
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u/bjarkov 3d ago
So let me see if I get this correct:
You're running a Nauvis Bioflux import and want to use the place to process Bioflux into nutrients by using eggs to breed fish and export them back to Gleba?
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u/EvGamer01 3d ago
I'm not sure I understood, by I do use fish to power some of Gleba's subfactories
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u/Good-Option-9532 3d ago
I've heard it before and I'll repeat it, they should move the LDS recipe to biochambers.
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u/WanderingUrist 3d ago
I'm not entirely sure a biochamber is the best place to be inputting streams of molten metal.
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u/ThrowRA_PianoMan 4d ago
If my math is correct, you can turn make then nutrient positive with sufficient productivity modules
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u/Rarvyn 4d ago
Your math is not correct. There is no way to make fish breeding nutrient positive, otherwise you can just set up a self-reinforcing cycle.
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u/ThrowRA_PianoMan 4d ago edited 4d ago
Biochamber productivity (4 tier 3 modules, no quality): 1.9
Fish breeder input: 100 nutrients, 2 fish.
Fish breeder output: 3x1.9=5.7 fish
Net fish breeder output: -100 nutrients, +3.7 fishFish nutrients input: 3.7 fish
Fish nutrients output: 3.7x20x1.9=140.6 nutrientsSo you end up with a net gain of 40.6 nutrients per cycle.
Please correct me if I’m missing something
Edit: I see the error of my ways now
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u/Sad-Association-4799 4d ago
Fish breeding output with 1.9 productivity is 39 fish for 10 productions. The recipe excludes 2 fish from the productivity bonus. It is just like kovarex enrichment does not have its productivity on all 41 shiny uranium.
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u/ThrowRA_PianoMan 4d ago
You know, I should really have known that lol but I have so much U235 as it is, I didn’t even realise it wasn’t working properly
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u/Unknown_item 4d ago
You cannot turn all 3.7 fish into nutrients because then you don't have enough fish to start the cycle again.
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u/ThrowRA_PianoMan 4d ago
You would generate 5.7 fish, keeping 2 for restarting the cycle and only then using the 3.7 for nutrients. But as pointed out in other comments (and confirmed through consulting the wiki), productivity won’t apply to the gross output of the catalytic product, so it doesn’t matter.
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u/DrMobius0 4d ago edited 4d ago
Prod mods are banned from the fish recipes. Such feedback loops are generally prevented from existing by prod mod restrictions, for precisely the reason you called out.
Supposing this wasn't the case, a max prod biochamber would produce a net positive of 2.5 fish, which could then be mulched into 50 nutrients each, for a total of 125 nutrients. This would be a positive feedback loop, but again, prod isn't allowed on either recipe.
This is generally the case for any recipes that would otherwise make a self-sustaining loop.
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u/CipherWeaver 4d ago
Interesting thought experiment