How much lube do you need?

[Chris!!]

Hey guys.

This is my first time doing this, so I want to make sure I'm doing this right when I'm gonna be having some fun with my homies tomorrow night:

I want to create a production of electric engines and some express belts and their underground and splitter versions. The express belts is not as important, as I plan to have bots slowly replace yellow and red belts in our factory as we expand - rather I'm more interested in how much lube I should be producing for electric engines, and how many of these per second would be a good start if I want to get both a bot network and some yellow science going.

Our target SPM is 240, and so far we've accomplished that with all science packs up to blue, though I'm not sure if it's worth trying to reach it for yellow science or we should settle with a lower SPM while we upscale our factory or build a new one elsewhere.

[Nonotorious]

Very little, i barrel it and send it around with bots instead of having to route pipes.

[Chris!!]

Originally posted by Nonotorious:

Very little, i barrel it and send it around with bots instead of having to route pipes.

Really? I thought barrels were bad for transporting liquids around with, ever since they nerfed the capacity of it.

[argrond]

Lube is probably the last thing you have to be concerned about when building drone chassises. Drones themselves are really technologically and time consuming, so just put a chem for lube from heavy oil and it will fill your tank with lube in no time. Much faster than you can organize production for all those chassises.

[malogoss]

Originally posted by Chris!!:

How much lube do you need?

Hey guys.

This is my first time doing this, so I want to make sure I'm doing this right when I'm gonna be having some fun with my homies tomorrow night:

Up to that point, I wasn't sure this was posted to the right forums, holy molly!
-----

The game is now more user friendly when it comes to figuring out ratios for these kind of things. You can hover production buildings and they tell you their production and consumption rates, accounting for modules, beacons, quality and all that modify those rates.

So you build yellow science assemblers, module and beacon them, and keep adding more assemblers until they make 4 science packs/sec in total.

Each assembler will tell you its bot frame consumption. Then go build frames, enough to feed that. And then enough electric engines to feed that. And then enough chem plants making lube to feed the electric engine production.

It's impossible to give a precise number without knowing all the modules and beacons details, but even naked chem plants making lube, 5-6 of them, can go a long way. Add modules and beacons, that should be a lot more than what you need for 240 spm.

Then you add more bot frame assemblers for the bots crafted for the logistic network. You really don't need much because those bots should be eternal. As long as you keep adding some in the network, you can have thousands of them eventually. What I'm saying is, no need for a constant +20 bots per second in the system.

240 SPM is too much as a first step if you ask me. Do you really need to have the capacity to research all techs in 2 hours, right off the bat? (Just throwing a number, did not calculate anything, so don't flame me). The problem is not the 2 hours. The problem is the many hours of building required to get there, while research is not moving. I always find it better to start all systems sooner, even if smaller, to later work on real scaling, But then the next guy is going to say 240 is fine. Your choice.

[Nonotorious]

Originally posted by Chris!!:

Originally posted by Nonotorious:

Very little, i barrel it and send it around with bots instead of having to route pipes.

Really? I thought barrels were bad for transporting liquids around with, ever since they nerfed the capacity of it.

Did they? Still using old blueprints and i haven't noticed any problems with lube.

[Chris!!]

Originally posted by malogoss:

-snip-

Yeah I understand hovering over assembly machines helps with figuring out ratios (which has been a tremendous help so far), problem is figuring out when enough of one thing is enough. For example during one of my first (often short-lived) sessions I would never expect to need to make a ton of green circuits for everything, so I don't want to make the same mistake of just making like 20 assemblers for one intermediate product and expect it to last me until I start doing late-game stuff.

Also I chose 240 SPM because I want to be sure the lower tier science packs wouldn't end up bottlenecking the higher tier packs that will crossing over the lanes where I have the packs produced. Maybe it might be overkill, but I didn't really think about it when making assemblers for red and green science.

[Chris!!]

Originally posted by Nonotorious:

Originally posted by Chris!!:

Really? I thought barrels were bad for transporting liquids around with, ever since they nerfed the capacity of it.

Did they? Still using old blueprints and i haven't noticed any problems with lube.

Admittably it was a long time ago. The barrels used to carry 250 units of fluid, which made pipeline logistics trivialized by bots.

[back_buffer]

This is a perfect time to familiarize yourself with a calculator mod, such as Helmod or Factory Planner. You can tell it you want to make X spm and it will tell you how much of each product to make. You can also add mall stuff like belts and robots. They all have a bit of a learning curve but they're worth it.

You could also use a calculator outside of the game like the Kirk McDonald calculator, but I don't know if it's updated for Space Age.

[Chris!!]

Originally posted by back_buffer:

This is a perfect time to familiarize yourself with a calculator mod, such as Helmod or Factory Planner. You can tell it you want to make X spm and it will tell you how much of each product to make. You can also add mall stuff like belts and robots. They all have a bit of a learning curve but they're worth it.

You could also use a calculator outside of the game like the Kirk McDonald calculator, but I don't know if it's updated for Space Age.

The problem is not how much, it's what's enough.

I can handle the math and would honestly prefer being able to solve it on my own. I just struggle to get to grips with how many intermediate products per second is a good baseline for a mid-game factory, especially now that I am setting up electric engines and other products unlocked by blue science.

[back_buffer]

Originally posted by Chris!!:

The problem is not how much, it's what's enough.

I can handle the math and would honestly prefer being able to solve it on my own. I just struggle to get to grips with how many intermediate products per second is a good baseline for a mid-game factory, especially now that I am setting up electric engines and other products unlocked by blue science.

How much stuff to make in your mall is up to your play style. For a lot of things, continuously making it is overkill. Most mall products don't pull resources for an extended period of time. You just make a stack or two of an item and stop. Also, robots will use the same products as yellow science, so you can siphon that stuff away and just stop researching.

I guess my suggestion to you is to build your base focused on science and wing it when it comes to your mall. You should be fine if you pause research when you're setting up new mall production.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Chris!!:

Originally posted by back_buffer:

This is a perfect time to familiarize yourself with a calculator mod, such as Helmod or Factory Planner. You can tell it you want to make X spm and it will tell you how much of each product to make. You can also add mall stuff like belts and robots. They all have a bit of a learning curve but they're worth it.

You could also use a calculator outside of the game like the Kirk McDonald calculator, but I don't know if it's updated for Space Age.

The problem is not how much, it's what's enough.

I can handle the math and would honestly prefer being able to solve it on my own. I just struggle to get to grips with how many intermediate products per second is a good baseline for a mid-game factory, especially now that I am setting up electric engines and other products unlocked by blue science.

Its a difficult question to answer without particulars and it changes as you research and add things. How is your power? Is it enough to add a refinery to produce lube?

If you have sufficient power are you going to use any modules. Speed modules and productivity modules change your output amount/rate at the cost of extra power.

How fast do you want to be able to produce express belts, splitters, and undergrounds?

How fast are you going to use surplus robot frames to make bots?

You can also just over build and store the surplus as long as you set up the refinery to prevent stalls.

This is what I use to get started
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3384963158

All heavy oil is converted into lube. All light oil and petro is converted into solid fuel that is burned for power. Coal supplements the solid fuel once the lube tank fills completely and production stalls.

[Chris!!]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

-snip-

Right, so my intent is to produce enough electric engines to produce enough yellow science to complete all the tech unlocked by yellow science within mayyyybe 2 or 3 hours. But I also want to make enough of them to have a mall for passively adding bots to the logistics system and a few rocket silos for once we do space logistics.

So far I have 24 assemblers for electric engines with direct insertion, I suppose that should be enough.

[astrosha]

TC, quite honestly, I would look at the available crude oil, set up Advanced Oil Processing for that much, ideally with Beacons and Modules, and then set up a Storage Tank for the Heavy Oil. Have that go to a bunch of Lube makers, so that you drink every last drop of Heavy Oil making the stuff.

Then connect a pump to the Heavy Oil Storage Tank, use a Circuit Network connection between the Pump and the Storage Tank, telling the Pump to Enable/Disable when Heavy Oil > 20,000. Then have that Pump direct all the Heavy Oil those Refineries can produce to cracking to Light Oil.

Something similar for Light Oil is beneficial, as well, though you might need multiple parallel pumps depending on how many crackers and Refineries you are using to generate Light Oil.

Either you have enough Lube generated this way, or you dont have enough Crude Oil processing. If you have enough, great! If you find yourself lacking in any Crude Oil Product (Heavy Oil, Light Oil, Petroleum Gas, and the things you make with those) then it is time to look for more Crude Oil, and to expand your Refinery/cracking setup.

[The Black Baron]

You don't need as much as Sean "Diddy" Combs but you need some ;)

[Simon]

Typically I need so little lube that I setup a production line for lube alone. Instead of producing it as a byproduct of advanced oil processing, it'll just discard light/petrol oil in order to produce as much heavy oil as needed. This makes the setup much simpler and less prone to clogging up for no reason at all.