this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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I’ve played the crap out of this game and never even got close to launching the rocket.
Which science did you get stuck at?
The 3rd science pack is probably the hardest leap forward. But purple/yellow science are difficult too (just not "as hard" as blue IMO).
The 3rd science pack requires mastery of oil refining. The 4th and 5th (purple/yellow) science packs are "just" about scaling up to exceptionally large bases, which is easier IMO than trying to figure out oil (though still somewhat difficult, and the scaling is of two grossly different stuffs. Purple science requires a ton of stone-and-steel, while yellow science requires a ton of copper).
Once you recognize that purple and yellow need way more space than you originally expected, its actually really easy. Just build "bigger" than you ever had before, but otherwise the basics are the exact same as red/green science. Don't build a "few" assembly machines, you need to be thinking of at least 50+ assembly machines for the entire purple / yellow chains, and possibly need ~2 or ~3 belts of raw iron ore (for purple) or ~2-to-3 belts of raw copper ore (for yellow). Meaning you need maybe 200+ furnaces (I'm not joking). But... "big designs" are just big, they're not actually difficult to think about.
The secret to this is mastery of Construction Bots and blueprints. When you have the Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V copy/paste button, it becomes really easy to copy/paste designs and scale up to hundreds of furnaces and assembly machines. Just Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V and then waiting around for bots to charge, but it all gets done really quickly even with low-movement speed.
You build a design that works for a little bit (makes ~1 purple science machine). Then you scale up by Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V so that you have dozens of purple-science machines working (which requires hundreds of earlier steps to work, but those "hundreds" were also accomplished with just a Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V).
3rd / Blue science is difficult because its the only time you ever have to master fluids in Factorio. Fluid trains, fluid wagons, fluid containers, etc. etc. You pretty much have two designs: you either bottle everything up into steel drums so that you can "stick with belts", or you learn to properly use pumps+pipes+trains (fluid wagons) to move things around. In both cases, its complex but its the only way you get past blue-science.
I can’t recall but I know it was somewhere around when you started messing with oil. Honestly the problem was space for sure. You build this massive complex factory but then you have to start making adjustments to try and fit new parts in and it just got so complex that in order to proceed I was gonna have to gut entire sections and restart, just lost interest.
Still an amazing game and I loved every minute of it. I did the same thing with rimworld. I have dozens of hours and I’ve never once launched the rocket lol.
Ah. You haven't learned the most important rule of Factorio.
Don't "erase" your old factory. Its far more efficient to instead "abandon" it. Space is infinite in Factorio.
"But the biters will attack and destroy the factory" ?? Well, guess what? You don't care. Automated cleanup. Just abandon it and move somewhere else.
And when you "abandon" a factory, its not a big deal to "undo" your decision, walk back, fix the few broken parts to grab the 400 belts you need for the new factory, and then "re-abandon" the factory. Deciding which parts are abandoned / not-abandoned is a state of flux. You can always reuse / repair the old factory as you spin up your new one. Just do whatever is easiest.
Bonus points: try to abandon your factory after the research of Construction Bots. At this point, you can CTRL-C your good designs into blueprints, and then CTRL-V the "good parts" of your factory over to the new base with very little effort.
But really, the answer is rarely to abandon your working factory. Instead, you use belts to pipe out every useful element of those factories (ie: iron, copper, circuits, gears, steel), and then expand your factory to a new location.
Same here. Love the game so much, but I end up taking a big break and coming back and not knowing how to play, so I just start new. Rinse repeat. Seems there's a year to build and launch a rocket before this expansion drops, so maybe I should fire it up again and give it another try.
See my post above.
In my experience, all beginners get through 1st and 2nd science, and then many get stuck on 3rd science and give up. In some rare cases, some people get trapped on 4th or 5th science.
3rd science (blue) is about learning how fluids work. You got either steel-drums route, or fluids / pipes route, and I recommend learning pipes. The advantage of steel-drums is that your "old belt based brain" will keep working. But spending the extra effort to learn how to use pipes+pumps+fluid trains leads to better long-term efficiency.
But you can absolutely win the game on belts + drums, I've done it before just for shits-and-giggles. So feel free to use belts+drums if it makes more sense to you.
4th and 5th science's secret is simply recognizing that you need to scale up to larger designs than ever before. Fundamentally, this means more belts of iron-ore + stone (leading to hundreds of furnaces to create iron-plates, steel-plates, and stone-bricks) to get past 4th science.... and more belts of copper-ore (for hundreds of furnaces to create copper-plates), and assembly machines (wires/circuits) to get past 5th science.
Once you recognize that you need "hundreds" of furnaces and assembly machines, its pretty easy to get past 4th and 5th science actually. You need to master the tools that lay out hundreds of machines at a time (ie: construction bots and blueprints).
Yeah I think the only one I haven't made is white science. Got up and past the others no problem, just probably lacking in the scale department. I usually get sidetracked at this point by wanting to make giant train networks, or focusing on screwing around with robots, or just waging a war against biters. I just need to focus and actually finish the rocket.
So while purple-science is scaling up iron/stone, and while yellow-science is scaling up copper...
White/Space science is mostly about scaling up petroleum (!!!), making you revisit the "difficult" 3rd / Blue science to mass produce plastic (Low-Density-Structures), Rocket Fuel, and Sulfuric Acid (Processing Units / Rocket Control Units) respectively.