Breeding pentapod eggs

[polvanacoleyen]

When using the pentapod egg breeding recipe (Water+Nutrients+1 egg --> 2 eggs), does the first egg get used up in the production of the other 2?
So that every cycle, you'd get just two fresh eggs, one of which you can feed back into the biochamber, leaving you with one fresh egg while a new cycle starts?

But then there's the production bonus of 50%, so actually, you'd get 3 eggs every cycle. So 2 eggs netto.
Right?
The cycle is 15s long, biochamber has a production speed of 2, so actually the cycle is only 7.5s. Conlusion: one biochamber produces 0.2667 eggs/sec. Still right?
If the original egg doesn't get used up every cycle, you'd get a lot more eggs of course...

Just want to do some planning beforehand. On my first try, i landed at Gleba, tried some stuff here and there, and suddenly my base was populated by premature pentapods who destroyed my cargo platform along with all the stuff i had brought. Never again.

[jaylawl]

The original egg is consumed and your bred eggs will be 100% fresh. One machine without modules produces 0.33 / s. Assuming that you are re-using the bred eggs to cycle again, you have to subtract 0.13 / s for the input and thus each machine produces 0.2 / s per second (info from building tooltip on my egg farm).

[polvanacoleyen]

Aha, then the output per cycle is not 3 but 2.5. So the base productivity applies per unit, not the total of the output. So 2 regular + 50% of 1 = 2.5 /cycle, instead of 2 * 150% = 3.

Thx!

[jaylawl]

Aha, then the output per cycle is not 3 but 2.5. So the base productivity applies per unit, not the total of the output. So 2 regular + 50% of 1 = 2.5 /cycle, instead of 2 * 150% = 3.

Thx!

Almost... productivity (in general, not just base building productivity) applies relative to progress made. So getting an additional product with 50 % productivity takes exactly 2 cycles; i like to use the formula: [additional product per cycle = productivity / 100]. It is just a little confusing here because of the recipe using one of its outputs as input. I recommend just placing ghosts of the biochambers you want to make and going by what the tooltip says.

[Mr Wednesday]

When using the pentapod egg breeding recipe (Water+Nutrients+1 egg --> 2 eggs), does the first egg get used up in the production of the other 2?
So that every cycle, you'd get just two fresh eggs, one of which you can feed back into the biochamber, leaving you with one fresh egg while a new cycle starts?

But then there's the production bonus of 50%, so actually, you'd get 3 eggs every cycle. So 2 eggs netto.
Right?
The cycle is 15s long, biochamber has a production speed of 2, so actually the cycle is only 7.5s. Conlusion: one biochamber produces 0.2667 eggs/sec. Still right?
If the original egg doesn't get used up every cycle, you'd get a lot more eggs of course...

Your math looks correct to me. (In detail, it's effectively producing two eggs on the first cycle and then four eggs on the second cycle, but that averages out to producing three on each cycle.)

[angramania]

Your math looks correct to me. (In detail, it's effectively producing two eggs on the first cycle and then four eggs on the second cycle, but that averages out to producing three on each cycle.)

But it is not. Try to apply the same logic to kovarex process and you will get very wrong result. See jaylawl comment, productivity is applied only to surplus products but not to catalyst.

[Mr Wednesday]

Your math looks correct to me. (In detail, it's effectively producing two eggs on the first cycle and then four eggs on the second cycle, but that averages out to producing three on each cycle.)

But it is not. Try to apply the same logic to kovarex process and you will get very wrong result. See jaylawl comment, productivity is applied only to surplus products but not to catalyst.

Key point, then, is that only one egg is a product, the other is the ingredient returned. In that case, the first cycle returns one extra product, the second cycle returns two, and the average surplus is 1.5.

Fortunately, I didn't build anything around the misconception that the ingredient was consumed.

[polvanacoleyen]

Aha, then the output per cycle is not 3 but 2.5. So the base productivity applies per unit, not the total of the output. So 2 regular + 50% of 1 = 2.5 /cycle, instead of 2 * 150% = 3.

Thx!

Almost... productivity (in general, not just base building productivity) applies relative to progress made. So getting an additional product with 50 % productivity takes exactly 2 cycles; i like to use the formula: [additional product per cycle = productivity / 100]. It is just a little confusing here because of the recipe using one of its outputs as input. I recommend just placing ghosts of the biochambers you want to make and going by what the tooltip says.

The tooltip is a godsend!
I completely forgot about it, I was so used to it not being there (played a lot since 2016 but barely played Factorio since 1.0).

[VampireSilence]

I just wanted to report the same bug and stumbled upon this thread, so i add what i found here.

Setup:

1x Biochamber (QL 5 / Legendary)
12x Beacons (QL 5)
16x Speed mods 3 (QL 5)
8x Efficiency mods 3 (QL 5)
4x Productivity mods 3 (QL 5)

Resulting properties:

Production speed: 74.15 (+1383%)
Productivity: +150%

Pentapod egg production: 17.3/s (given by the tooltip)

That's the numbers, now the math.

Expected result: 2 eggs / 15 s * 74.15 * (1+1.5) = 24.72 eggs / s

24.72 eggs/s does not match the tooltip's 17.3 eggs/s, but that's not new at this point. But what's new is the fact that not even the 1 (net) produced egg matches that result. Watch this:

Expected result: 1 eggs / 15 s * 74.15 * (1+1.5) = 12.36 eggs / s

12.36 eggs/s does also not match the tooltip's result! So i wondered what base value the game assumes and that's easy calculated:

Base value with productivity bonus: 17.3 eggs / s * 15 s / 74.15 = 3.5 eggs

So the tooltip says it's 3.5 eggs produced per recipe including productivity. So now we also revert the productivity to find the base value of the produced eggs per recipe:

Base value: 3.5 eggs / (1+1.5) = 1.4 eggs

Can anybody explain why the game assumes 1.4 eggs to be produced per recipe? It's not the 2 eggs per recipe we'd expect when comparing to the Kovarex process and it's also not the 1 egg per recipe we'd expect when assuming the net production of (2-1=) 1 egg per recipe. So where does that 1.4 come from? That makes absolutely no sense to me.

I found that the difference between the biochamber with/and without prod modes is 250% and 150% respectively, so the added +100% is 40% of 250% (100% / 250% = 0.4) and i don't know if that's a random match, but i think it could be a mistake in the formula. A clarification would be highly appreciated.

[eugenekay]

The definition for the pentapod-egg recipe:

Code: Select all

ingredients =
{
  {type = "item", name = "pentapod-egg", amount = 1, ignored_by_stats = 1},
  {type = "item", name = "nutrients", amount = 30},
  {type = "fluid", name = "water", amount = 60}
},
results =
{
  {type = "item", name = "pentapod-egg", amount = 2, ignored_by_stats = 1, ignored_by_productivity = 1}
},

The "ignored_by_stats" and "ignored_by_productivity" flags prevents double-counting the 'input" egg as being consumed/output to preserve the idea that it is the same egg being duplicated in the process.

1 Output + 150% Producitivty bonus + 1 "ignored_by_producitivity" output = 3.5 Eggs per Craft.

04-07-2026, 15-32-05.png (594.12 KiB) Viewed 50 times

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