Holmium ore bottleneck

[Falesz]

Hey all,
I've spent all day on Fulgora to make a working factory that would supply Nauvis with Electromagnetic science packs.
I think it should work pretty well by now, except for the Holmium ore bottleneck. I went back to Fulgora to add Scrap mining outposts and Scrap recycling facilities in my factory like 3 times now, but that 1% Holmium ore drop is just way too low. Am I missing something? Is there something that can be done besides just brute force spamming Scrap recyclers?

[Liwet]

Originally posted by Kratt:

Id like to know this as well

It was mentioned earlier. Take the output of a recycler and put it back in the recycler (or in another recycler). You only get 25% back of what you put in on average.

[argrond]

People do it this way - recycle A LOT of scrap, "burn" in recycler anything excessive, keep holmium.
Place productivity modules in any holmium-related production stage.
Use foundries to make holmium plates, default +50% to productivity and 5 slots for productivity modules.
As mentioned, seek for red-colored patches with fulgurite on the map, they give you one-time good amount of holmium ore. It's not confirmed, but I have a feeling those "crystal trees" may be reappearing in areas which are not covered with lightning-collecting buildings, so you may be wanting to place radars all over the map and check the map once in a while to see if there are any red-colored patches on it.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Liwet:

Originally posted by Kratt:

Id like to know this as well

It was mentioned earlier. Take the output of a recycler and put it back in the recycler (or in another recycler). You only get 25% back of what you put in on average.

To add to that: recycling has a variable recipe length. Breaking an item apart takes as long as it does to run the recipe in the 'normal' direction. So some items take longer to recycle than others. (Notably: low density structures and processor units.)
However, items that recycle into themselves are special in that they don't have a manufacture recipe associated. They all just operate off of a stand-in self-referencing recipe with a very, very minimal production time. (Save for plates - which appear to be based off of the recipe used for smelting them in a furnace.)

So if you want to get rid of 'base' materials like iron plates; copper plates; etc. lightning-fast ... just make two recyclers crammed with speed modules face one another; and watch them go...

[DaBa]

You aren't "brute forcing" anything by scaling up, that's literally what you're supposed to do. I would've expected anybody who played Factorio long enough to make it to another planet to have learned this lesson already: IF you don't have enough of something, just make more of it.

[CasualGamer]

I've taken a different tact. I try to produce a finished product using multiple base or low level units(Circuits,chem plants, refineries, even recyclers) I make these in facilities equipped with max quality packs. Then I recycle those. I find the return on investment a lot better and occasionally you'll get a top tier finished product from base materials.

[Shas'O O'Kais]

For every full turbo belt worth of scrap, I add enough recyclers to process it all, then some more to loop around and destroy anything that aint the ore.

My main base already gets an overabundance of all the resources I actually need, at this point I only need more ore, so this method works really well. Just make a setup for one full turbo belt as a blueprint, then paste it down for every full belt you can provide per patch, then get a train to ship it all back to your science production area. EZ PZ

[Fletch]

The bottleneck for me on Fulgura are accumulators for science, because no where near enough batteries. I've got an entire battery production chain (8 chem factories producing batteries all loaded with production modules and surrounded by speed beacons) -- still not enough batteries -- though it is a good use for the otherwise junk wire and gears (and ice).

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by Fletch:

The bottleneck for me on Fulgura are accumulators for science, because no where near enough batteries. I've got an entire battery production chain (8 chem factories producing batteries all loaded with production modules and surrounded by speed beacons) -- still not enough batteries -- though it is a good use for the otherwise junk wire and gears (and ice).

Are your sure your problem is crafting speed?

When I was working through a Holmium stockpile, my critical issue was, surprisingly, sulfuric acid. I've literally never had "not enough sulfuric acid" be a problem for me before. Although, ultimately it was a symptom of limited water supply.

[Fletch]

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

Are your sure your problem is crafting speed?

When I was working through a Holmium stockpile, my critical issue was, surprisingly, sulfuric acid. I've literally never had "not enough sulfuric acid" be a problem for me before. Although, ultimately it was a symptom of limited water supply.

Water quickly became the bottleneck when I built out battery production, tripled water production to get a decent amount of sulfur to make the acid. It's all good, the factory must grow to get the science production throughput up to where I want it.

[argrond]

Originally posted by Fletch:

Water quickly became the bottleneck when I built out battery production, tripled water production to get a decent amount of sulfur to make the acid. It's all good, the factory must grow to get the science production throughput up to where I want it.

Why do you even need battery production if you are getting batteries from scrap? It's huge, pointless waste of resources.

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by argrond:

Originally posted by Fletch:

Water quickly became the bottleneck when I built out battery production, tripled water production to get a decent amount of sulfur to make the acid. It's all good, the factory must grow to get the science production throughput up to where I want it.

Why do you even need battery production if you are getting batteries from scrap? It's huge, pointless waste of resources.

The obvious reason: if you need more batteries than you get from scrap.

I suppose you could just void your holmium ore when it backs up because your science factory is battery limited, but crafting batteries seems like a much better option.

[Ishimuro]

same issue, dropping ice from orbit to supply battery production is quite easy and i dont want to void holmium as it is one of the 4 "finite" items

[argrond]

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

Originally posted by argrond:

Why do you even need battery production if you are getting batteries from scrap? It's huge, pointless waste of resources.

The obvious reason: if you need more batteries than you get from scrap.

I suppose you could just void your holmium ore when it backs up because your science factory is battery limited, but crafting batteries seems like a much better option.

Umm, what for? Considering holmium-battery ratio from scrap, you will be already getting thousand of batteries before you get to do something significant with holmium. Considering that Fulgora is void of other water resources, wasting precious ice-melted water on batteries you are already receiving instead of heavy oil liquification or holmium proceeding which are essential for many important production lines seems like a bad idea to me.

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by argrond:

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

The obvious reason: if you need more batteries than you get from scrap.

I suppose you could just void your holmium ore when it backs up because your science factory is battery limited, but crafting batteries seems like a much better option.

Umm, what for? Considering holmium-battery ratio from scrap, you will be already getting thousand of batteries before you get to do something significant with holmium. Considering that Fulgora is void of other water resources, wasting precious ice-melted water on batteries you are already receiving instead of heavy oil liquification or holmium proceeding which are essential for many important production lines seems like a bad idea to me.

I suspect it's a matter of productivity.

Holmium gets multiplied a few times throughout the production chain -- so maybe what's happening is that it's only people using a lot of productivity that see batteries become the bottleneck.

... or, I suppose, people who are still placing lots of accumulators for power reasons. But I just double checked and that's not the situation in my factory: my accumulator buffer really has been full while I'm watching the scrap outputs fail to fully supply my battery line, so it's just science eating them up.

[Entropy]

Nah, u never need more batteries than what u can produce with "scraping scrap per second ratio". Meaning if u can produce 2 holmium ore on average per second, your science will never need more than the batteries(8) u can get on average per second. This is why most effective things to do is, using your BEST productivity modules on anything that requires holmium solution or plates thus holmium ore.

If you want to produce more accumulators and scrap <->reassemble for higher quality accumulators, then yes you may need to do it but then you need to produce sulfuric acid<-sulfur<-petrol... U need to spend so much ice to create water.