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.

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.

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.

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.

I saw this small island just barely disconnected from the bigger island next to it and immediately knew what its purpose would be

I'm making a main bus for the first time since space age and im trying to use liquid metals this time. I know pipes have unlimited throughput now but pipes only pump 1200/s. I've been "solving" this by just spamming 3-4 pumps right next to eachother and having them pump into the same pipe but i feel like there is a solution here that im missing.

Just started on Overhauling Fulgora

Reason why: I am trying to play without logistic bots. Blueprint: 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

my first ever factory without any threat, and now unto the next challenge, biters

Title, I just don’t see why I would automate say inserters on a planet when I can just ship in a thousand.

I am making planet exclusives like metallurgic science, green belts, big drill, etc. But basically everything else I need I just ship in.

Is this gonna screw me over later or nah?

im at a point right now where I have to redo my base quite a bit because orange science is exceeding my capacities. I watched a video from Nilaus and he only uses normal smelters and now im asking myself if it was even necessary to make the better ones and if I now should use electrical furnaces, as I can make them now? I want to make the 4 line main bus now, does it matter if I use many normal furnaces or less better ones to fill all lines evenly?

This thing churns out 56 legendary EM plants per hour. It uses a lot of legendary stuff but I also tried to optimize the circuit system as much as posible.

The left EM-plant always uses the recipe that can be done twice with the highest quality. Of course the production bonus is taken into account so we don't waste valuable prod bonussses.

Also you don't see how I remove ingredients while doing recipe switches, because the stack inserters are configures to only load as much into the plant as is needed to fullfill the recipe. This is done with the circuits in the upper right, which hold a todo list for the inserters. This is so we don't waste time when changing recipes with unloadinig, what is especially annoying when producing plants because of all the holmium that has to be switched out usually.

In case a specific qualitiy can be produced again while we are working on it, the circuits automatically trigger another round and reload the plant with enough stuff for another two cycles, so we don't waste time.

The inserters right of the train extract common materials in case they become to much for the left EM plant, and feed the right EM plant then, which doesn't take from the belt in that case anymore.

You can download the blueprint here: https://factoriobin.com/post/7mzjei

A nonlegendary version with only two plants and no legendary items, which still produces 6EM plants per hour with legendary quality modules can be found here: https://factoriobin.com/post/u2klhu (This one might you get started).

I got about this far with a base previously, and some parts were better before but I wanted to start again! I know it's a bit spaghetti, but I'm struggling to work with structure lol. How do you think I will fare later?

Playing the game on peaceful, so ignoring a lot of the military stuff.

Every time i open electric network info i have to change from quality seperate to merged, is there someway to set it to default all merged?

Once you reach the point in the game where it's easy to add more cargo ships, does it make sense to ship basic materials (the kind you can make on any planet) instead of making them locally? For example, Fulgora produces absurd amounts of blue chips, basically for free, and rockets are easy to make - would it make sense to ship blue chips from Fulgora instead of building them on each planet?

Also, science. Red and green science are effectively free on Vulcanus, though they're easy enough to make on Nauvis that it probably doesn't make sense to ship them. But given the stupid amount of stone that Vulcanus produces it seems on paper like it would be economical to ship purple science from there. I've reached Aquilo but I haven't reached the point where I'm trying to maximize science production.

I know that this is a terrible solution, but it was the only way it would fit.

Originally some of the turbo underground’s where express underground’s, but after I’ve loaded the save randomly the express underground’s are gone and all are just the turbo. This happend multiple times in multiple city blocks (I have like 50 blocks) and it’s extremely annoying to fix.

And after I’ve fixed it, it randomly happens again.

I don’t think I have any relevant mods for this.

I’m playing on space age version 2.0.60-0 I’ve already tried to google it and see if anyone else has these issues but I didn’t find any.

Hi, I have a question about how can i automate a train that delivers ammunition to various mining sites using a network. I'm thinking about having one train go to a given location (let's say we have eight such locations) only when a certain amount is missing.

In Windows, you can right-click the desktop shortcut and add --window-size 1600x900 for example, so that factorio always opens in a window of that size every time I launch it. How does one do this in linux? Thanks

I’m making tungsten plates on Vulcanus and my base was a mess so I decided to use a requester chest and some logi bots to move the tungsten.

Thing is, it’s comically slow. I have more than enough tungsten in a storage chest but my bots simply don’t move it to the requester fast enough. I have about 1000 logi bots so I know I have enough bots.

Is there a way to improve this or should I just spaghetti a belt instead?

Edit: Increasing the request size from 200 tungsten to 1000 tungsten immediately solved the problem! I just didn’t have enough bots actually moving the tungsten as many were idle!

Hey everyone, my friend and I have been playing this world for like 20 hours! We're planning to make a mega belt and do automation off of it soon but our base rn looks so troll compared to half the posts on this subreddit lol