Four Science - 120 per minute Blue/Red/Yellow/Purple

Produces all science cubes up to purple at 120 per minute (2/sec), proliferates them, and exports them in an ILS. Proliferates every production step using internally-produced proliferator, and exports the excess proliferator in an ILS (approximately 25/min). Excess hydrogen is consumed to produce (proliferated) fuel rods exported to either Icarus or another distributor via logistics bots, then burns excess rods in a thermal power plant, then exports any remaining hydrogen in the ILS. Requests and distributes warpers once the technology is unlocked.

This factory is intended to be a replacement for the early-game non/partially-proliferated science spaghetti. It consolidates all the science production into one location and produces and proliferates each of the sciences equally – no more juggling research bottlenecks between different builds!

This blueprint uses only Mk. II facilities so that it can be built before unlocking purple science, and it uses lots of belt-bendy sorcery to compress the build below 3600 total facilities so that it can be placed at the yellow science tech level – it will start working right away even if you haven’t yet unlocked purple science, and you can return later to manually set the recipes for the purple science production chain as you unlock them.

Must be placed in the equatorial or mid zones with the row of four chemical plants facing horizontally and oriented toward the equator. 

 

(Updated to correct splitter priority for directing hydrogen to red science – 12/28/23)

(Updated to add additional graphite smelters to improve self-start capability – 1/11/24)

(Updated to add the missing thermal power plant to consume excess fuel rods - 1/12/24)

 

!! Important !!

This build (especially the purple science) takes a long time to fully start up. It can take upwards of thirty minutes to see all four sciences reach 120/min, but you should at least see production reach a minimum of 60/min within a few minutes of completing the build. If you want to speed this up, manually load some Proliferator Mk. III into the system before starting the factory (you’ll know you’ve added enough when the proliferator overflow is routed to the ILS for export)

While highly unlikely, it is technically possible for the oil processing to clog if the hydrogen system is fully saturated (fuel rod storage filled, then thermal power plant saturated, then ILS export slot filled). At an excess of 20 hydrogen per minute this would take just over ten hours assuming no hydrogen was ever exported or consumed for power. If this is still a concern for you, a simple solution is to belt the hydrogen out from the export ILS to some thermal power plants, but I didn’t add this to the blueprint due to the size limitation at the yellow tech level.

 

Outputs:

Electromagnetic Matrix (Blue Science): 120 per minute
Energy Matrix (Red Science): 120 per minute
Structure Matrix (Yellow Science): 120 per minute
Information Matrix (Purple Science): 120 per minute

Proliferator Mk. III: 25 per minute (excess)
Hydrogen: 20 per minute (excess) -> Hydrogen Fuel Rod (~4 per minute)
 

Inputs:

Power: 170MW

--Common--
Iron Ore: 320 per minute
Coal: 970 per minute
Copper Ingot: 450 per minute
Crude Oil: 100 per minute (1.667 per second – one pump on the starter planet should suffice)
Silicon Ingot: 620 per minute
Titanium Ingot: 330 per minute

--Rare--
Fire Ice: 240 per minute
Organic Crystal: 80 per minute

--Optional Helper Builds--

This is a fantastic little blueprint that I use in every single run on my way through yellow science. I can’t recommend this one enough, and you’ll only need one copy of it to supply this factory as it just barely out-produces the demand. (Nice and efficient!)

FAQ:
Q: Placement?
A: Place in the equatorial or mid zones, with the chemical plants oriented toward the equator.

Q: How can I help the system start up faster?
A: Manually place Proliferator Mk. III on the belt that the proliferator assemblers export to, allowing the spray coaters to saturate before turning on the imports.

Q: Why are some resources requested raw, and others are requested processed/smelted?
A: I prefer to smelt Silicon and Titanium in-situ to “compress” them (they smelt at 2-to-1) so that they require fewer logistics vessel trips. However, I prefer to ship Iron and Stone (which smelt at 1-to-1) raw so that each build can turn the ore into Ingots/Magnets/Bricks/Glass as needed, that way I only have to maintain one resource (the ore) in the logistics network instead of two (ingots/magnets and bricks/glass).

Q: What if I don’t have access to these rare resources?
A: You don’t have access to Organic Crystals yet. Instead, you should use a helper build (see above) that can provide at least 80 Organic Crystals per minute to the logistics network. Producing these on-site would require another ILS to handle the inputs, and would significantly exceed the facility limit of the blueprint size that is available at this tech level, and by this point you probably already have a dedicated Organic Crystal factory for your existing yellow science production.

Once you unlock yellow science, you probably have access to Fire Ice through either your starting giant or an ice planet. If not, you can modify the build by changing the Fire Ice import slot to a Graphene import slot, and reconnecting the belts to/from the Graphene plants accordingly. The factory will demand 300 Graphene per minute from your logistics network. You will also need to change the hydrogen export slot to an import slot as you will no longer be producing hydrogen as a byproduct of the Graphene recipe, and then proliferate and belt that hydrogen to the red science labs so that the oil refineries have priority (the easiest way to do this is a belt T-junction, with the refinery hydrogen going straight and the ILS hydrogen joining the refinery belt at a right angle)

Since most players (myself included) tend to select clusters that have at least one source of Fire Ice in the home system, I’ve left the build configured for Fire Ice. Placing all the belts for the alternate configuration would (again) significantly exceed the facility limit of the blueprint size that is available at this tech level, so I’ve left those modifications up to the user to make if needed.

Q: Can I see your math? Why this design?
My primary design consideration here was the overlap between the raw materials required to produce purple science and the three previous sciences. Purple requires processors (which require circuit boards, a component of blue science, and the iron/copper input can of course be used to create magnetic coils) and particle broadband (which require oil refinement, the preliminary step for red science). Additionally, particle broadband requires nanotubes, which means we have all the components to make Proliferator Mk. III internally -- and the only missing component of yellow science is organic crystals. However, I almost always produce these separately from my yellow science builds, so they are always in my logistics network as soon as I have the PLS available. With all that said, the effort to build a dedicated purple science build often felt wasted to me as I was already completing so many intermediate steps toward blue/red/yellow - so I set out to combine them as elegantly as I could!

The other reason that I created this blueprint was to ease the awkward transition from science spaghetti (non-proliferated and pre-logistics) to cleaner, proliferated builds that can export via a PLS/ILS to centralize the science cubes for research. I kept getting frustrated on each of my playthroughs with tearing down old spaghetti blue/red builds and then bottlenecking on one of the sciences, so the other major design considerations were consolidating the science production and ensuring that it was balanced to avoid bottlenecking due to mismatched cube production rates. 
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Blueprint

  • Author: Stormblessed
  • Collection: Public
  • Game version: 0.9.27.15466
  • Copied: 16 times
  • Created: 4 months ago
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