Science pack
Science Packs are items which are required by labs to perform research. Researching technologies requires a certain number of different types of science packs, which is then multiplied by a certain value to get the tech cost. For example, Bullet damage 3 requires one Science Pack 1 and one Science Pack 2 and one Military Science Pack to begin researching, but it needs this to be input into labs a total of 100 times, raising the research cost to 100 Science Pack 1, 100 Science Pack 2 and 100 Military Science Pack.
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Creating science packs
There are several examples of how to create a working science pack production line. Many examples can also be found in the Show your creations board or Help board of the forum. If one cannot find a solution to their problem there, they can always ask for help in the latter forum!
The ratio needed to keep science production in sync is 5:6:12:5:7:7, or 5 Red science assemblers:6 Green science assemblers:12 Blue science assemblers:5 Military science assemblers:7 Production science assemblers:7 high-tech assemblers.
As a very basic example here is a working setup for automated red and green science pack production (posted by Bleda in the forum: [1]): Tips:
- No more than 3-4 red and green assemblers are ever needed. If the player manages to build enough labs that they outpace your production, they should typically be at the stage where they can utilize modules. This should help mitigate the need for new assemblers until a new solution can be made.
- Leave space for feeding higher tier tech packs! You'll need to be able to supply your science labs with a maximum of 7 unique science packs. If you are having issues supplying labs with science packs, you can utilize the fact that science labs will pass their contents to other science labs, allowing setups as seen to the right.
The next step is to create blue science packs. This incorporates two new 'raw' intermediaries - Plastic and Steel, which represents a small jump in complexity; as well as necessitating the need harvest and process Oil.
Following blue science, you will need to create military science packs. As the name suggests, military science packs are made out of combat-oriented products. Unlike previous science packs, military science produces two packs per crafting cycle versus just one per cycle from red/blue/green. You may want to create military science packs before creating blue science packs if you're having issues with Biters.
After military science, production science packs are next. Production science packs are a fair jump in complexity, as the required products have quite a few different intermediaries. Production packs, like military packs, yield two packs per crafting cycle.
The final stage of automated research pack creation is high-tech science pack. High-tech sciences packs are the most complex packs to make, requiring a large chain of intermediate products. High-tech science packs, like previous high-level science packs, yield two packs per crafting cycle.
Space science packs are yielded from launching satellites via rocket, and thus are difficult to automate effectively without massive resource-hungry bases. Unlike other science packs, space science packs are exclusively used to research repeating/infinite technologies - such as mining productivity or stack inserter size.