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Crafting time per science pack of Blue/Chemical Science packs are out of order compared to the rest.

• Red 5s
• Green 6s
• Grey 5s
• Blue 12s
• Purple 7s
• Yellow 7s

Just cut the craft time in half to make it in-line with the rest.

Have you considered how many flasks are produced in one go?

Yes. Crafttime/produce count is below

• Red 5/1 = 5
• Green 6/1 = 6
• Grey 10/2 = 5
• Blue 24/2 = 12
• Purple 21/3 = 7
• Yellow 21/3 = 7

stdmtc wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 27, 2024 3:46 am

Crafting time per science pack of Blue/Chemical Science packs are out of order compared to the rest.
Just cut the craft time in half to make it in-line with the rest.

Time is not the only component of a recipe. Can't have a 1.5 red circuit in a recipe, so the recipe's overall balance would have to be altered too.

Koub wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:26 am

stdmtc wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 27, 2024 3:46 am

Crafting time per science pack of Blue/Chemical Science packs are out of order compared to the rest.
Just cut the craft time in half to make it in-line with the rest.

Time is not the only component of a recipe. Can't have a 1.5 red circuit in a recipe, so the recipe's overall balance would have to be altered too.

The suggestion was only to halve the time, so half the number of machines are required for a given science pack output rate, making it similar to all the other science packs instead of being the sole outlier. There is no suggestion to change ingredients and/or results.

It would mean a reduction in space and cost to build, but not by much considering the other infrastructure needed for chemical science packs. It would also double the workload of inserters loading/unloading chemical science assemblers, but I think that would still be low enough not to matter. I can't see any other effects.

Oh fair enough.

I also find it a strange artefact, which never made much sense to me.
But I have a feeling that the 2.0 is coming with major tech and science rebalance, and no effort will be put into balancing the current state, which I can understand.

stdmtc wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 27, 2024 3:46 am

Crafting time per science pack of Blue/Chemical Science packs are out of order compared to the rest.

• Red 5s
• Green 6s
• Grey 5s
• Blue 12s
• Purple 7s
• Yellow 7s

Just cut the craft time in half to make it in-line with the rest.

I'd like to push back on this idea. I think blue having a large crafting time is good, as it's one of the primary motivators for new players to build more than one of a particular crafting machine for the first time.

computeraddict wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 29, 2024 1:25 pm

stdmtc wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 27, 2024 3:46 am

Crafting time per science pack of Blue/Chemical Science packs are out of order compared to the rest.

• Red 5s
• Green 6s
• Grey 5s
• Blue 12s
• Purple 7s
• Yellow 7s

Just cut the craft time in half to make it in-line with the rest.

I'd like to push back on this idea. I think blue having a large crafting time is good, as it's one of the primary motivators for new players to build more than one of a particular crafting machine for the first time.

You would still need to have a large amount of crafting machines to feed it though since you need to make both engine units and red circuits which both also have a really long crafting time. Current ratio is 12 Blue Science, 10 Engine Units, 9 Red circuits which would change to 6 Blue Science, 10 Engine Units, 9 Red circuits thats 31 crating machines down to 25 which is still a lot.

And if we are talking about a new player i think they are more likely to build more crafting machines if you lowered the crafting time since if you make 1 blue science machine it can be feed with 1 red circuit and 1 engine unit machine and have the belt still fill out. But if the craftime was halfed theyd see that the belt is gonna remain empty with just 1 red/engine crafting machine and theyd need to add a 2nd of each to make the belt fill up.

Yeah, I agree with this one. The blue science is off compared to the rest.

I would actually go a step further and say all the Science Packs should be balanced such that they take the same amount of assemblers to output the same amount of science per second.

At least I never was much of a fan of "arbitrary" crafting times just for that "puzzle" feel. The recipe ingredient ratios already do that.


Currently if you want 1 science pack per second for each you need following amounts of assemblers (as a result of the recipe crafting times & science packs they give):
5 for Red
6 for Green
5 for Grey
12 for Blue
7 for Purple
7 for Yellow

That is in total 42 assemblers.


To make the total amount of assemblers unchanged from currently I would balance it as following:

Green & Red, outputting 1 science pack, the recipe should take 7 seconds total
Blue & Grey, outputting 2 science packs, the recipe should take 14 seconds total
Purple & Yellow, outputting 3 science packs, the recipe should take 21 seconds total

If you want 1 science pack per second for each you need following amounts of assemblers:

7 for Red
7 for Green
7 for Grey
7 for Blue
7 for Purple
7 for Yellow

That is in total 42 assemblers. ^^

So we effectively redistributed the assemblers from blue to the others by slightly adjusting the crafting times to be in line with the amount of science packs they give. The amount of total assemblers needed remained the same.


But I think I had that discussion in another thread already like 5 or 6 years ago, and nothing changed. So I doubt it will with 2.0 (except from the rebalancing that will obviously be necessary with the SA content). ^^

I don't support changing the crafting time for the science packs. I remember very well it was the science packs that actually made me think about ratios on a larger scale and about building multiple assembling machines according to ratio to get the same output for different items. How to normalize any output frequency to 1/s to make different items comparable. The same principle applies for oil/sulfur/sulfuric acid/batteries/explosives. You can of course use tools like rate calculator, but a beginner should not use such tools but learn how it really works.

This has taught me that for an item with 5 seconds crafting time, I can employ 5 assembling machines to get 1 item per second. This is red science. So I use 6 assembling machines for green science, but 10 for 2 military science? This fraction can be shortened: 5 for 1 military science. 24 for 2 blue science or 12 for 1. 21 for 3 purple or 7 for 1. The same for yellow.

Results in 5:6:5:12:7:7. Just build one half of your main base with that number of science assemblers (the other half is the mall), and you last with this (possibly doubled) until all science is researched except the infinite ones. Building that 12 machine long line makes you think about building bigger unified structures.

I agree- Blue Science requiring almost twice the number of assemblers as the later science never made sense to me. Cutting the time in half sounds logical.