I need some help working out the math...

[EmberStar]

I could really use some assistance getting up to speed with the math for production. It's been too long since I was in school, and I'm clearly failing at understanding the ratios involved. It doesn't help that everything seems to have a different production cycle length.

And I do not understand the science buildings at all - do they produce one cube every ten seconds, multiplied by the number of buildings in a stack? Right now I'm using two stacks of five each for the red and blue - does that mean they combine to produce 10 cubes every ten seconds?

I'm trying to set up to make yellow science cubes. Eventually I'd like to figure out how to feed the science machine so that it can keep up with the red and blue towers, but for now I just want to get *any* Yellow Cubes. As part of that, I'm building an array of 20 refineries all in one place, set to make Refined Oil. Making the rather huge assumption that I understand the recipe:

Each refinery consumes 2 crude oil every 4 seconds. 2c/4s is 0.5 crude/second? So 20 Refineries would be outputting 10 refined oil per second?

And this is the point where my ability to work through it completely breaks down. Plastic and organic crystals produce on totally different timings. I don't have Interstellar Logistics, so I'm trying to do as much as possible in one place to save on Logistics towers. I'm trying to divide the output between making plastic and organic crystals, and the numbers I'm getting don't make any sense.

To be honest so far I've just been doing it "the stupid way," especially with smelting ores. IE, I just keep adding more pairs of smelters until it clears the backlog, and then remove them until only the last pair is idle most of the time. (So that if I research improved resource collection one or both of the idle smelters will catch the overflow when the rate increases.) This is, obviously, not a very efficient plan.

And since I am having so much trouble understanding the rates for production, it keeps breaking down anyway. I can't get a handle on how much of any resource is being used, and therefore I have no way to balance for it. Instead, I'm wildly overproducing some items and having massive shortages on others.

I've tried watching the ratio tutorial by Nilaus, and I'm still not getting it. I would really appreciate it if someone can explain it better. (I don't need "goldfish simple," I did finish college. But I've never worked with this kind of math before, and I'm clearly failing to understand something very basic about it. I have no idea *what* though. )

[RandomEnchanter]

Originally posted by EmberStar:

And I do not understand the science buildings at all - do they produce one cube every ten seconds, multiplied by the number of buildings in a stack? Right now I'm using two stacks of five each for the red and blue - does that mean they combine to produce 10 cubes every ten seconds?

There are two modes for science buildings, production and consumption. Production has each matrix made at its own rate (blue takes 3 seconds per, red is 6 seconds per, yellow is 8 seconds per etc)

consumption is at a steady rate that i'm not sure what the time rate is.

Suffice to say, you should try to make an equal amount of each matrix type per second.

Originally posted by EmberStar:

Each refinery consumes 2 crude oil every 4 seconds. 2c/4s is 0.5 crude/second? So 20 Refineries would be outputting 10 refined oil per second?

Somewhat, You would have a problem with the belts that you would have to get around, but yes.

Originally posted by EmberStar:

I would really appreciate it if someone can explain it better. (I don't need "goldfish simple," I did finish college. But I've never worked with this kind of math before, and I'm clearly failing to understand something very basic about it. I have no idea *what* though.

the best way that I have found if you want to perfectly balance is to utilize a tool such as the wiki calculator ( https://calc.dsp-wiki.com/#items=rocket:f:1 ) which will tell you how many buildings/nodes/amount per second you need to make the desired quantity.

Alternatively you can just try to overproduce on everything and use storage/overflow areas on anything you care about

[FMAylward]

Originally posted by RandomEnchanter:

There are two modes for science buildings, production and consumption. Production has each matrix made at its own rate (blue takes 3 seconds per, red is 6 seconds per, yellow is 8 seconds per etc)

consumption is at a steady rate that i'm not sure what the time rate is.

I'm not sure of the rate either but I believe the the ratio is the same as the amount of each cube so if you need 200 blue and 200 red it will consume 1 each per research tick while if you need 200 blue but only 100 red it will consume 1 blue and half a red per research tick. You can see the base idea in action when you have the research from inventory option turned on you will see the different speeds of the usage highlight, I've not actually looked into it in detail.


But I don't manual math things and just use a calculator with it being this one. https://factoriolab.github.io/list?p=&s=dsp&v=1

[Kendov]

To make things simpler (if you ware willing to accept mods) there's a mod that gives you every recipe for one minute instead of the smallest possible. The numbers are larger, too, which actually makes calculations a lot easier. as for the science buildings, each layer is running the production by itself, so if you have an 1cube per 8sec recipe, 8 labs produce a total of 1/s

[Gerion]

You must remember only 3 rules:
1. One MK3 conveyour move 30 items/s. All calculations depend on this value.
2. For every recipe, you need same amount producing buildings (for Assemblers only MK 2) as recipe processing time for recipe result per second. For example, basic oil refinery recipe produce 2 refined oil and 1 hydrogen from 2 crude oil per 4 seconds. Therefore you need 4 refineries for 2 refined oil and 1 hydrogen per second. With this knowlege you easily can calculate amount of refineries that filled up one mk3 conveyor (4 refineries x 15 = 60 refineries).
2.1 Assemblers have different speed of production. I dont calculate it for MK1 but for MK 3 you must divide by 1.5. For example, you need 15 Assemblers MK2 for 30 magnetic coils per second, but only 10 (15 divide 1,5), if you use Assemblers MK3.
3. For huge expand of processing chains, firstly calculate last items production. Then calculate production of its parts and do it step by step up to basic resources.

About labs: every laboratory in tower produce cubes with basic recipe. So, rule 2 will help you. For late game, when you will learn all vertical construction techs, you can easily calculate it with towers: highest tower has 15 labs, so you need 3 full towers for 15 blue cubes/s, 6 for 15 red cubes/s and etc. Double amounts for 30 items/s. And calculate all the world!!!!

[s1nfu77]

The readout on the assembly machine tells you how many times minute that machine produces. It also tells you how many resources it uses in that minute when filled. When actively changing machines use the 10 sec tab. The in game counter is an average so it's slow to update. I don't really use the rate screen. I kinda just leave an open space to design machines and/or plan for a little wiggle room for this reason as I just let the belts visually tell me if it's right. Things like this product doesn't reach, or this product can output more on this built. If a Machine stops somewhere I check the whole line just to be with occasionally checking the rates to see amounts that being made rather than actually figuring out ratios.