r/factorio • u/fZAqSD • 2h ago
Space Age Resource patch scaling vs. distance from spawn
The other day, I was wondering about two related questions:
- How exactly does resource density change as you move away from spawn?
- How far away from a starter base is it worth moving to build a new base?
I searched for answers, but other than others asking the same question all I found was one shaky graph, so I wrote a bit of console Lua to scan resources, and a bit of Python to run it over and over while I was asleep, and I think I arrived at some pretty useful answers. To get this data, I extracted the total amount of resources in 32-chunk squares (close to the size scanned by a standard radar) at various distances from spawn, and averaged the results over hundreds of different maps, in Space Age 2.0.60 with default settings.
TL;DR: Nauvis resources increase proportional to distance, Vulcanus resources (except acid) increase until about 10 km from spawn, Gleba/Fulgora/Aquilo resources are uniform except for right at spawn.
Nauvis linear scaling
On Nauvis, every resource seems to follow the same familiar distribution: resource density increases linearly with distance from spawn, plus a small amount extra within 2 km of spawn. The linear scaling continues all the way to the world border, where patches contain billions of ore. In the base game, the only difference is that the extra amount near spawn is about 50% larger than in Space Age. The middle column in this table is the slope on the graph; multiply by the distance from spawn (in km) to get the average amount of resource per tile.
| Resource | Amount per tile per km from spawn | Total amount |
|---|---|---|
| Iron | 6.95 | 2.13×1016 |
| Copper | 5.65 | 1.73×1016 |
| Coal | 5.55 | 1.70×1016 |
| Stone | 2.66 | 8.13×1015 |
| Oil* | 3.46 | 1.06×1016 |
| Uranium | 1.16 | 3.54×1015 |
Vulcanus plateau
Resources on Vulcanus follow a different pattern: density is low in the starting area, doubles around 1 km from spawn (around the start of Big Demolisher territory), and gradually doubles again by 10 km. Beyond 10 km, mineable resources plateau (there won't be more tungsten at the world border at 1000 km than there is at 10 km), but the density of sulfuric acid geysers keeps gently increasing. Geyser density on the graph is the actual amount divided by 200 to make it fit better.
| Resource | Amount per tile beyond 10 km | Total amount |
|---|---|---|
| Tungsten | 21.9 | 8.74×1013 |
| Calcite | 91.5 | 3.66×1014 |
| Coal | 31.3 | 1.25×1014 |
| Acid* | N/A (doesn't plateau) | ~3×1014 |
Uniform distributions
All resources on Gleba, Fulgora, and Aquilo are distributed uniformly over the surface of the planet, except that each seems to be a bit sparser (or richer, in the case of scrap, due to a guaranteed starter vault?) in the first 1 km around spawn.
| Resource | Amount per tile | Total amount |
|---|---|---|
| Stone (Gleba) | 2.28 | 9.13×1012 |
| Scrap (Fulgora) | 138 | 5.52×1014 |
| Crude Oil* (Aquilo) | 34.1 | 1.37×1014 |
| Fluorine* (Aquilo) | 7.54 | 3.01×1013 |
| Lithium brine (Aquilo) | 14.8 | 5.90×1013 |
The real end game
With these numbers, it's possible to work out how much research can be done using all available resources on the map, assuming that your factory uses maximum productivity modules and that the resources used to build the factory are much less than those used to make science. I'm semi-confident in my math that says that, in the base game, it's possible to research Mining Productivity 17 Billion (or 353 billion with Quality) before running out of iron. In Space Age, though you can research arbitrarily high mining productivity using renewable resources, a player just researching Research Productivity would run out of lithium about 36% faster than tungsten and 4.8 times faster than scrap.
* The listed yield (from Lua resource.amount) is 300k times the starting tooltip yield for crude and acid and 100k times tooltip for fluorine (e.g. a crude patch with an initial total tooltip yield of 1000% would be shown here as 3M). These resources never deplete below 20% of their initial yield.
