How to have a perfect lab setup?

[me go ur mom's place]

I am currently trying to set up a research area with around 30 labs which i will increase to around 48 later. What i am confused about is how many types of sciences maximum is needed at a time for a research in late game? I am a new player so I dont know anything about lategame and I am trying not to spoil myself by watching youtube tutorials. I also dont want to tear down my hardwork and rebuild it later just because i wasnt able to fit all the sciences in my array. I really want my factory to be future proof.

The max I was able to see in the Tech tree was 6 (red, green, yellow, blue, gray and purple for spidertron, wtf is this thing, cant wait to get it).

I can manage 8 types of sciences at a time by placing all labs in a line and running 2 belts on each side, each belt with 2 types of sciences on it. I can then use the red and yellow inserters to feed the lab from both sides. This way I wont have to chain the labs with inserters and waste inserters and time while researching. But if there are more than 8 types of sciences then i have no option but to surround 49 labs with 2 belts on each side of the square each belt having different sciences (16 max science types this way), then chaining the labs together so each lab gets what it needs either from the belt or surrounding labs, but this method will give me diminishing returns in terms of research speed the more i expand the factory, since inserters take a long time to insert things. Even fast inserters start to show some issues with a large enough factory.

Please tell me how you guys managed to build a future proof lab factory where you can just hook up the sciences and forget about it and just keep researching. Please keep spoilers to a minimum if possible, but its okay if you cant help it. Thanks!

[Fel]

In vanilla, there are 6 "normal" science packs and 1 "space" science pack (obtained by launching satellites in rockets, so after the "win") so your 8 half-belts are enough.

If you look around, you will see several setups but they usually fall within 3 basic categories.

The first would be a fairly "standard" 4 belts feeding labs, a very neat way is to use underground belts alternating red and blue (one belt being red and one being blue) so all 4 belts can fit in 2 tiles.
With 2 tiles worth of red inserters you can pick from all 4 belts easily.

The second is the so-called "sushi belt" method where you put all science packs on a single belt that forms a loop and labs take from it.
This is a bit more complex to setup because you usually want to use circuit network to keep a stable count of each science pack on the belt and avoid filling it with unused ones (for example military science packs when you are researching non-military stuff).

The third is to make a small logistics network covering the labs and deliver all science packs to requester chests near each group of labs.

In all 3, you can also take advantage of inserters beign able to take from labs to put into other labs, even the first solution can easily allow you to support 2-3 labs behind each lab taking from the belts.

Note that you can also use modules and beacons with labs so manu end game labs use productivity modules and have beacons with speed modules affecting them as well, allowing each lab to research faster while consuming less science packs (but at the cost of a much higher electricity consumption).

EDIT: If you want to use mods though, you can go much crazier, there is one that adds 30 new science packs to the mix for example so it becomes significantly more challenging to feed labs by belts.

[me go ur mom's place]

Originally posted by Fel:

In vanilla, there are 6 "normal" science packs and 1 "space" science pack (obtained by launching satellites in rockets, so after the "win") so your 8 half-belts are enough.

If you look around, you will see several setups but they usually fall within 3 basic categories.

The first would be a fairly "standard" 4 belts feeding labs, a very neat way is to use underground belts alternating red and blue (one belt being red and one being blue) so all 4 belts can fit in 2 tiles.
With 2 tiles worth of red inserters you can pick from all 4 belts easily.

Wow that's brilliant, I have played through the belt tutorial level and wondered when do you actually need to squeeze 3 belts into 2 lanes? Just use landfill! Well, this is a good situation to use that knowledge.

Sushi belt seems inefficient to me, probably because i don't even know what circuit network or logistic network is. Chaining the labs as you said is also something that i thought about but it is so slow to load the labs, it might be fine with 4 or 5 chained labs but more than that is not worth it in my opinion.

Thanks for the answer though! Imma go nuts with labs now!

[Fel]

Don't hesitate to share some screenshot of it when you are happy with what you made, it's always fun to see what other people come up with since it's usually different from other solutions unless you are copying someone else.

[me go ur mom's place]

Originally posted by Fel:

Don't hesitate to share some screenshot of it when you are happy with what you made, it's always fun to see what other people come up with since it's usually different from other solutions unless you are copying someone else.

Here, i wasnt able to figure out how to post images here so posted it on imgur.

https://imgur.com/gallery/zRGlMzX

I am pretty happy with the design for red and green science that I came up with. I use the same design wherever i need a scalable factory design. Replace the assemblies with furnaces for a smeltery and so on. for more than 2 inputs i use the lab one, where there 2 belts on either side of the arrays. This is the first time I had to think about 7 inputs, but it becomes simple since labs dont have an output that you need to worry about.
the three belts in between the 2 lab arrays are meant for 3 science types. the middle one will have 1 type and the rest will have 2 types each so both arrays get access to all 7 types.
As you can see, I shot myself in the foot by making a huge green science setup and then having not enough inserter production. I can't even expand that since i ran out of space there so i just gave up lol.

I would appreciate some feedback regarding my setup!
Thanks for the help!

[Fel]

In case you didn't notice, red science has a base crafting time of 5 seconds and green is 6 so you need a few more machines for green if you want to produce both at the same rate.

EDIT: Other than that, your setup looks fine, maybe a bit difficult to expand later on if you want more labs to research faster.

[me go ur mom's place]

Originally posted by Fel:

In case you didn't notice, red science has a base crafting time of 5 seconds and green is 6 so you need a few more machines for green if you want to produce both at the same rate.

EDIT: Other than that, your setup looks fine, maybe a bit difficult to expand later on if you want more labs to research faster.

ooh thanks for the input! will make green science factory bigger

[Fel]

When you look at a recipe (or technology), among the ingredient for one cycle you also have the base time for it (it's the icon that looks like a clock).
It's further multiplied by the machine's own speed but if you use the same machines for two recipes you can just base yourself on the base time.

[me go ur mom's place]

i see, i didnt know that. Thanks for the info!

[Sebine]

I think the best science setup is from NeoVortex
https://factorioprints.com/view/-LV4ZJpfgpKKUkyodKiz

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/608756311135486125/921066520044523540/unknown.png

Made of low tech so it's buildable very early on and easily upgradable.
And it tiles seamlessly (like the rest of his kit), so you can just slap on more and more on the end.