Organic Crystals for Yellow Cubes: Faster way to make them.

[jamiechi]

I am having difficulty making enough of these to fill an MK1 belt.
(Would like to feed an MK2 belt. I don't have the MK3 belts yet.)

I have 10 buldings making plastic, and 8 making the Organic Crystals.
And the crystal veins are so rare, I have not found one yet.
I could use some help with this.

And It would be helpful to know, how many oil refinaries I would need.

Thanks in advance.

[Kyrros]

Yeah, any resources that are oil dependent are a bit of a PITA.
Organic crystals (before you can specialty-mine them directly) are the 2nd most annoying recipe in the game (Quantum Processors being #1) because of the sheer volume of chem plants it requires down the entire chain.
36 Plastic chem plants and 36 Organic crystal chem plants are needed to fill a Mk1 belt. Double that for a Mk2 belt.
The painful part (though, admittedly, less-so now that blueprints have been unlocked) is the
SIXTY.... 60... 6-0! ... Oil refineries you need to feed that Mk1 belt chain.

Power-hungry and real-estate-eating is the chain needed for yellow research. *sigh*

[Jan]

It depends on how big you want your build. For the start I would not recommend to make it too big because you can just mine org. crystals later on.

In general big science builds early on are not worth it in imo. You will run out of things to reasearch very fast. This is even more important if you have not unlocked interstellar logistic yet. You need titanium for yellow science.

I would just focus on the tech for interstellar logistic stations.

And you do not need a full green belt of science at this stage of the game. Maybe 2 max hight towers blue, 4 towers for red and so on.

Use this calculator for ratios if you do not want to do it by hand:

https://factoriolab.github.io/list?p=c-matrix*120&s=dsp&v=1

[Kyrros]

Addendum: The factoriolab calculator (originally for Factorio game) has been expanded to include DSP, just make sure to select the correct game at the top - and is quite useful for planning/questions like these.

https://factoriolab.github.io

[Richard]

Chem Plants make 1 Organic Crystal every 6 seconds. So for a full MkII Belt, you would need 12 x 6 = 72 Chem Plants.

Each Chem Plant making Organic Crystal takes 1/3 per sec Plastic and 1/6 per sec Refined Oil and Water. So that is 24/s Plastic and 12/s Refined Oil and Water.

Each Chem Plant making Plastic produces 1/3 per sec Plastic and consumes 2/3 per sec Refined Oil and 1/3 per sec Energetic Graphite. So You need 72 Chem Plants making Plastic, consuming 48/s Refined Oil and 24/s Energetic Graphite.

Your total Refined Oil consumed is 12 + 48 = 60/s.

Each refinery produces 0.5/s Refined Oil and 0.25 Hydrogen consuming 0.5/s Crude Oil. So you need 120 Refineries consuming 60/s Crude Oil. This also outputs 30/s Hydrogen that needs to be used elsewhere/disposed of.

24/s Energetic Graphite requires 48 Smelters consuming 48/s Coal.

So in total to provide a full MkII belt of Organic Crystals you need;

• 72 Chem Plants making Organic Crystals
  
• 72 Chem Plants making Plastic
  
• 120 Refineries making Refined Oil
  
• 48 Smelters making Energetic Graphite
  
• 12/s Water (1 belt)
  
• 48/s Coal (4 belts)
  
• 60/s Crude Oil (5 belts)

Given that the starter would typically has around 30/s Crude Oil if you tap every Oil seep, you are not getting this level going until you are importing oil from other systems.

This would be feeding 48 Assemblers making Titanium Crystals producing 12/s, which would feed 96 Labs producing 12/s Yellow Science.

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by Jan:

In general big science builds early on are not worth it in imo. You will run out of things to reasearch [sic] very fast.

Research in DSP is literally infinite. You WILL need all those colored research chains to later create the white research that everything else in the late-game so heavily dependent on. Ex: 15-20 levels in Vein Utilization is fairly common in games, and all of the other infinite researches add marginal to moderate benefits as well as one expands their sphere-making empire.

[Richard]

Originally posted by Kyrros:

Originally posted by Jan:

In general big science builds early on are not worth it in imo. You will run out of things to reasearch [sic] very fast.

Research in DSP is literally infinite. You WILL need all those colored research chains to later create the white research that everything else in the late-game so heavily dependent on. Ex: 15-20 levels in Vein Utilization is fairly common in games, and all of the other infinite researches add marginal to moderate benefits as well as one expands their sphere-making empire.

:sphere:

While true, research before getting to white is frequently unbalanced in what cubes are needed, and early setups usually don't scale well. generally sticking to 2/s-4/s until you are able to set up proper production lines work well.

[Koro]

If you are capable of interstellar travel with warpers it is will worth it to spend some time just clicking on various star systems until you find one with organic crystals. They are not that rare.
It is almost impossible to really scale up using the normal recipe. It's just meant to get you started as far as I can tell

[jamiechi]

Thanks everyone. This has been very helpful. I think for now I'll try for 1/2 of an MK1 belt and extend it later.

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by Koro:

If you are capable of interstellar travel with warpers it is will worth it to spend some time just clicking on various star systems until you find one with organic crystals. They are not that rare.
It is almost impossible to really scale up using the normal recipe. It's just meant to get you started as far as I can tell

Like Silicon being more easily mined directly than produced from stone, and Sulfuric Acid is more productive being pumped than manufactured, Organic Crystals are much more easily mined than manufactured. The time spent attempting to scale up production of those resources from oil is better spent flying elsewhere to set up "production facilities" consisting of nothing more than miners or pumps, and Interstellar Logistics Towers full of cargo transports. Leave the plastics production for the Particle Broadband phase.

The Veins Utilization research will dramatically increase your mining output while reducing its input requirements (more resources gained, with less node usage), eventually resulting in effectively infinite resources. Liquids are effectively infinite from the beginning. As a rule of thumb, as soon as you can reach the next level of it, that's your primary research target.

All of that being said, as soon as you can produce Interstellar Logistics Towers and travel between systems at whatever you consider to be a reasonable speed, go set up some crystal mines and acid pumps, and stop worrying about scaling up "the hard way" to produce them. That way lies madness, not profit.

[jamiechi]

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Originally posted by Koro:

If you are capable of interstellar travel with warpers it is will worth it to spend some time just clicking on various star systems until you find one with organic crystals. They are not that rare.
It is almost impossible to really scale up using the normal recipe. It's just meant to get you started as far as I can tell

Like Silicon being more easily mined directly than produced from stone, and Sulfuric Acid is more productive being pumped than manufactured, Organic Crystals are much more easily mined than manufactured. The time spent attempting to scale up production of those resources from oil is better spent flying elsewhere to set up "production facilities" consisting of nothing more than miners or pumps, and Interstellar Logistics Towers full of cargo transports. Leave the plastics production for the Particle Broadband phase.

The Veins Utilization research will dramatically increase your mining output while reducing its input requirements (more resources gained, with less node usage), eventually resulting in effectively infinite resources. Liquids are effectively infinite from the beginning. As a rule of thumb, as soon as you can reach the next level of it, that's your primary research target.

All of that being said, as soon as you can produce Interstellar Logistics Towers and travel between systems at whatever you consider to be a reasonable speed, go set up some crystal mines and acid pumps, and stop worrying about scaling up "the hard way" to produce them. That way lies madness, not profit.

Sounds good to me.

[Jan]

Originally posted by Kyrros:

Originally posted by Jan:

In general big science builds early on are not worth it in imo. You will run out of things to reasearch [sic] very fast.

Research in DSP is literally infinite. You WILL need all those colored research chains to later create the white research that everything else in the late-game so heavily dependent on. Ex: 15-20 levels in Vein Utilization is fairly common in games, and all of the other infinite researches add marginal to moderate benefits as well as one expands their sphere-making empire.

:sphere:

True, but it is way better to start with a basic factory to unlock all techs and then follow this up with new builds on a much bigger scale. And in my experience this first factory does not have to be big. You just let it run and work on the big things in the mean time.

[darkestkhan]

Originally posted by Jan:

Originally posted by Kyrros:

Research in DSP is literally infinite. You WILL need all those colored research chains to later create the white research that everything else in the late-game so heavily dependent on. Ex: 15-20 levels in Vein Utilization is fairly common in games, and all of the other infinite researches add marginal to moderate benefits as well as one expands their sphere-making empire.

:sphere:

True, but it is way better to start with a basic factory to unlock all techs and then follow this up with new builds on a much bigger scale. And in my experience this first factory does not have to be big. You just let it run and work on the big things in the mean time.

Not to mention that any setup from early game will be demolished and replaced by mid/late game. No point in going big when 1-2/s is more than good enough. Hell, 1/s is fine - it is fast enough that you will have hard time catching up with production expansion, unless you decide to idle.

[Enkido]

Build Plan[factoriolab.github.io]

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by Enkido:

Build Plan[factoriolab.github.io]

Alright, let's do this.

Firstly, thank you Enkido for sharing a production facility that would solve the issue! It provides a handy foil to express my earlier point. Please do not take offense, my criticism is of the efficiency of the process itself, not your build ;-)

That build produces 12 crystals per second, and costs nearly an entire inventory of materials to produce the 387 machines (not counting the need to generate over 300 MW of power, or the spaghetti mess inherent in that many sorters and belts)... Nor does that include any kind of transport, off-planet or otherwise.

To put things in perspective, that's the same output as 4 Miners.

4 Miners eat a combined total of less than 1.7 MW of power and require a whopping 16 Iron Ingots, 8 Circuit Boards, 8 Magnetic Coils, and 8 Gears to build (plus belts). As plentiful as Iron and Copper are, you probably don't even need to bring the materials with you; you could hand-craft the miners on-site while you decide on the best location for the cargo tower, including the time spent sparking some nodes to get the materials. A single Thermal Power Plant would provide all the needed power, with some to spare (not counting the tower, of course).

You'll need to bring an Interstellar Logistics Station full of Logistics Vessels... but even so, you could mine 120 Crystals per second and ship them home at a small fraction of the time, material and power requirements of Enkido's manufacturing facility... even without warpers.

Even including time spent searching for and traveling to a planet with minable crystals, it's likely to be as fast or faster to fly elsewhere, set up (checks notes) five buildings, a stack or two of belts, and two dozen thermal power stations tied to a handful of Oil Extractors because the tower is an energy hog than it would take to set up that (~ 400 machines + umpty-bajillion belts and sorters) manufacturing facility (and don't forget a 300MW power facility). We're also completely ignoring that you'd need half a planet to set up the 12 crystals per second manufacturing facility, whereas the footprint of an ILS and even a few dozen miners is miniscule in comparison.

TL;DR: The only benefit to producing Organic Crystals via manufacturing instead of mining and shipping them is if you can't find another planet that has them available to mine, or if you've let the veins run out by not pushing Veins Utilization in the tech tree soon enough.