Factorio Forums

Posted: **Thu Nov 06, 2025 8:10 am**

RockPaperKatana wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 6:55 am because belt storage encourages boring builds while being about 6x as effective as not using it. Giving them spoil time would make vastly different builds more interesting, as more aspects of ships would matter instead of only size and belt density now, such as platform speed (both short term burst speed to arrive at high density promethium zones and sustained speed to maximize production speed) actually makes a difference. What a sandboxy game to punish thinking differently or taking more aspects into consideration. Other than making them spoil, making promethium science productivity scale with distance to the shattered planet and bypassing 300% max prod would also work.

Fast, immediate-to-science ships are already more efficient than belt storage ships for 10k+ SPM. At this scale (5000+ tons), ship weight becomes the limiting factor of speed. Belt storage means lower speed, longer cycle time, and ultimately more ships per SPM.

I prefer the idea of making promethium science productivity scale with distance to promethium spoiling. Currently going far and fast only increases promethium density but it quickly overwhelms legendary collectors and stops being useful. Plus, I'd prefer belt storage to remain viable.

For the first promethium ship, overgrowth soil is actually quite good since it lets you iterate at a relaxed pace and at <500 eggs per trip the efficiency is OK.

Posted: **Thu Nov 06, 2025 8:52 am**

RockPaperKatana wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 6:56 am have you even tested how ineffective this is before commenting?

Yes it works fine, you don't need to worry at all about spoilage even if the proposition was implemented.

RockPaperKatana wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 6:59 am It adds actually putting thoughts into building a promethium ship, instead of just building a giant square with tons of belts. Less is more.

oh yeah because a 12x12 block of only storage bay is SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING than all the possible design for belt storage x).

Posted: **Thu Nov 06, 2025 10:25 am**

RockPaperKatana wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 6:55 am because belt storage encourages boring builds while being about 6x as effective as not using it. Giving them spoil time would make vastly different builds more interesting

With chunks spoiling you're adding a hard restriction, and hard restrictions lower the amount of possible and viable builds, so it's reducing build diversity. Not increasing it. You will probably get "better" builds, but you will get significantly less different builds and approaches in general once the community found out about the most efficient build strategy.

I don't feel my ship is cheesing. It wasn't trivial to build and balance. I'm using promethium belt storage to be able to immediately begin producing science as soon as the ship loads eggs. It continues to produce science on its way through the solar system up to the farming area, and the storage is consumed shortly into the farming. The eggs are consumed as well shortly before they spoil and on its way back the storage is being filled as well, so it can arrive at Nauvis again with a full buffer. That's a round trip time of about 2*30 minutes = 60 minutes. The ship loads 8500 eggs in one batch from 17 dedicated rocket silos, so it stays at Nauvis no longer than 1 minute. Speed 280-300 km/s within the solar system, slower outside of the edge of the solar system depending on distance / asteroid density. Will produce 15300 promethium science for one round trip. Storage space 9300 promethium chunks.

Everything normal quality. In my opinion the peak of what you can do in terms of efficiency with normal quality. For me, the meaning of efficiency is minimizing the downtime of promethium science production. For my ship, the downtime is about 50% - just the way back to Nauvis. [the platform itself isn't the peak of optimization - the reactor is too big and there is much unused space, but I was really too tired to spend more time on this].

If you make promethium spoil, you have to bring eggs to the farming area, but when you arrive there they're already 3/4 spoiled so in essence you spend the most time just flying back and forth and doing nothing with a tiny amount of actually producing science, which is silly. Or you're forced to create and bring "conserved" eggs with overgrowth soil and extract them with 1/4 efficiency, which is silly as well. You have to create overgrowth soil on Gleba, but you don't have stone/landfill on Gleba in quantities, so it's even more silly to have to provide Gleba with stone or landfill.

Finally, it's silly to see promethium chunks spoil in a few minutes on a platform while they didn't spoil in the shattered planet remains for probably billions of years.

So in my opinion, the current mechanic is perfectly ok. It's not taken to the extreme and the player has freedom in how he implements it.

The only thing that could be improved in my opinion would be a special promethium cargo bay with the same space/capacity ratio as an equivalent "good" belt storage. Cosmetics.

: 11-06-2025, 11-21-36.png (3.14 MiB) Viewed 555 times

: 11-06-2025, 11-24-32.png (3.59 MiB) Viewed 555 times

Posted: **Thu Nov 06, 2025 11:33 am**

I collect promethium in cargobays on my ship, not belts. Is it "efficient"? Probobly not. Do I care? Not at all.

I bring the prometium back to Nauvis where it's dumped to the surface, then it's shiped up to a different platform that does the science. Again, not efficient, but its my way and I like it.

If promethium suddenly was made to spoil, my way would no longer work at all and I'd be forced to play in a different way. That hardly sounds like increasing diversity in builds.

Posted: **Thu Nov 06, 2025 3:51 pm**

Which dark necromancer summoned this year old thread from the depths of the underworld? Are you celebrating its anniversary?

Anyway, when I had made this thread, I didn’t quite have a full understanding of space platform mechanics, because at the time Space Age had only released recently. I made it with the idea that ships could be increasingly made faster by making them smaller, aka more space efficient, aka higher quality and more cleverly designed. However, this is not actually true. Ship speed depends very weakly on size, to the point that it can be completely ignored. And that renders the entire point I was trying to make completely moot. So this thread is pretty pointless, and has no business being active at all.

Although despite not having any stake in the discussion myself, I must admit the side that the side in favor of belt storage is not making any good points at all. Calling freeplay a sandbox when the game literally had “sandbox” as a separate mode? Saying bad balance is ok just because it adds diversity? I sure am glad this isn’t a thread with an actually meaningful topic.

Posted: **Thu Nov 06, 2025 4:28 pm**

h.q.droid wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 8:10 am
RockPaperKatana wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 6:55 am because belt storage encourages boring builds while being about 6x as effective as not using it. Giving them spoil time would make vastly different builds more interesting, as more aspects of ships would matter instead of only size and belt density now, such as platform speed (both short term burst speed to arrive at high density promethium zones and sustained speed to maximize production speed) actually makes a difference. What a sandboxy game to punish thinking differently or taking more aspects into consideration. Other than making them spoil, making promethium science productivity scale with distance to the shattered planet and bypassing 300% max prod would also work.
Fast, immediate-to-science ships are already more efficient than belt storage ships for 10k+ SPM. At this scale (5000+ tons), ship weight becomes the limiting factor of speed. Belt storage means lower speed, longer cycle time, and ultimately more ships per SPM.

I prefer the idea of making promethium science productivity scale with distance to promethium spoiling. Currently going far and fast only increases promethium density but it quickly overwhelms legendary collectors and stops being useful. Plus, I'd prefer belt storage to remain viable.

For the first promethium ship, overgrowth soil is actually quite good since it lets you iterate at a relaxed pace and at <500 eggs per trip the efficiency is OK.

That's tiny. I have a 600k espm promethium storage ship and it's boring as hell.

Posted: **Thu Nov 06, 2025 4:31 pm**

Tertius wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 10:25 am
RockPaperKatana wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 6:55 am because belt storage encourages boring builds while being about 6x as effective as not using it. Giving them spoil time would make vastly different builds more interesting
With chunks spoiling you're adding a hard restriction, and hard restrictions lower the amount of possible and viable builds, so it's reducing build diversity. Not increasing it. You will probably get "better" builds, but you will get significantly less different builds and approaches in general once the community found out about the most efficient build strategy.

I don't feel my ship is cheesing. It wasn't trivial to build and balance. I'm using promethium belt storage to be able to immediately begin producing science as soon as the ship loads eggs. It continues to produce science on its way through the solar system up to the farming area, and the storage is consumed shortly into the farming. The eggs are consumed as well shortly before they spoil and on its way back the storage is being filled as well, so it can arrive at Nauvis again with a full buffer. That's a round trip time of about 2*30 minutes = 60 minutes. The ship loads 8500 eggs in one batch from 17 dedicated rocket silos, so it stays at Nauvis no longer than 1 minute. Speed 280-300 km/s within the solar system, slower outside of the edge of the solar system depending on distance / asteroid density. Will produce 15300 promethium science for one round trip. Storage space 9300 promethium chunks.

Everything normal quality. In my opinion the peak of what you can do in terms of efficiency with normal quality. For me, the meaning of efficiency is minimizing the downtime of promethium science production. For my ship, the downtime is about 50% - just the way back to Nauvis. [the platform itself isn't the peak of optimization - the reactor is too big and there is much unused space, but I was really too tired to spend more time on this].

If you make promethium spoil, you have to bring eggs to the farming area, but when you arrive there they're already 3/4 spoiled so in essence you spend the most time just flying back and forth and doing nothing with a tiny amount of actually producing science, which is silly. Or you're forced to create and bring "conserved" eggs with overgrowth soil and extract them with 1/4 efficiency, which is silly as well. You have to create overgrowth soil on Gleba, but you don't have stone/landfill on Gleba in quantities, so it's even more silly to have to provide Gleba with stone or landfill.

Finally, it's silly to see promethium chunks spoil in a few minutes on a platform while they didn't spoil in the shattered planet remains for probably billions of years.

So in my opinion, the current mechanic is perfectly ok. It's not taken to the extreme and the player has freedom in how he implements it.

The only thing that could be improved in my opinion would be a special promethium cargo bay with the same space/capacity ratio as an equivalent "good" belt storage. Cosmetics.

11-06-2025, 11-21-36.png
11-06-2025, 11-24-32.png

Ok so you have a tiny ship as well instead of taking a look into what belt storage ultimately encourages. Try building bigger, try my mod that makes promethium chunks spoil or the mod that increases science productivity by proximity to the planet.

Posted: **Thu Nov 06, 2025 4:34 pm**

SirSmuggler wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 11:33 am I collect promethium in cargobays on my ship, not belts. Is it "efficient"? Probobly not. Do I care? Not at all.

I bring the prometium back to Nauvis where it's dumped to the surface, then it's shiped up to a different platform that does the science. Again, not efficient, but its my way and I like it.

If promethium suddenly was made to spoil, my way would no longer work at all and I'd be forced to play in a different way. That hardly sounds like increasing diversity in builds.

unfortunately I think it's just normal that builds will break with new balance. This is 100% a suggestion for 2.1 where tons of stuff will break like space casinos and LDS washing.

Posted: **Thu Nov 06, 2025 5:45 pm**

RockPaperKatana wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 4:31 pm Ok so you have a tiny ship as well instead of taking a look into what belt storage ultimately encourages. Try building bigger

Nope, I will not build bigger. That's not a part of the game I'm interested in. I'm quite sure I'm not the only player with this view of the game. My build is already bigger than many others for the same purpose of just farming some promethium and do a little bit of that science just for the sake of it. If I need more I build 2, 3, 4... platforms of that size but I will not build a much bigger platform than that. That's just not my plan with Factorio.

You need to make a game mechanic proposal that fits small builds like mine as well as yours and be better for both of them. It's not simply "add spoiling". You need a whole bunch of balanced changes throughout the whole item tree involved in promethium science if you want to do a significant change. The change must scale and be balanced from small to biggest builds. Keep in mind large builds are not the common case, so you cannot alienate a big part of the player base by forcing a restricting game mechanics upon them that's meant for the largest builds only. Only few players really build for millions of SPM.
The distribution of player numbers is likely to follow a Gaussian bell curve with a maximum somewhere in the middle.

Posted: **Fri Nov 07, 2025 1:50 am**

RockPaperKatana wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 4:28 pm That's tiny. I have a 600k espm promethium storage ship and it's boring as hell.

Well, I want to take a look at it

600k espm is about equivalent to my ship here at ~research productivity 75: viewtopic.php?t=130934

What's your cycle time? And UPS with ship en route to shattered planet?

Posted: **Fri Nov 07, 2025 2:43 am**

CyberCider wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 3:51 pm And that renders the entire point I was trying to make completely moot. So this thread is pretty pointless, and has no business being active at all.

I agree with the first part, but some players may still not realize it, the thread can still be informative.

CyberCider wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 3:51 pm Although despite not having any stake in the discussion myself, I must admit the side that the side in favor of belt storage is not making any good points at all.

I disagree it's fairly well explained by several players that they enjoy doing it, that's one point, allowing various build, instead of having only one way to try and min-max, there are different concepts that can be weighted against each other when discovering the game. You say yourself that some things were not immediatly clear for you when you started to use space age, so you most likely had various options to consider to pick the best depending on the situation. ( level of research, size of base , objectives ... ).

Another point was that your proposition doesn't address what you described as a problem. ( Removing belt storage option to enforce storage bay instead )

Another point is that what you described as problem was based on incorrect old assumption and isn't really one. ( Belt storage isn't actually that good in late game, but you didn't know at first).

RockPaperKatana wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 4:34 pm unfortunately I think it's just normal that builds will break with new balance. This is 100% a suggestion for 2.1 where tons of stuff will break like space casinos and LDS washing.

Promethium science packs used to spoil, it's unlikely it comes back, nor on the chunks themselves imo.

RockPaperKatana wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 4:28 pm
h.q.droid wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 8:10 am Fast, immediate-to-science ships are already more efficient than belt storage ships for 10k+ SPM. At this scale (5000+ tons), ship weight becomes the limiting factor of speed. Belt storage means lower speed, longer cycle time, and ultimately more ships per SPM.
That's tiny. I have a 600k espm promethium storage ship and it's boring as hell.

I think h.q.droid is saying that it's more efficient NOT to use storage ship at this size, it's already currently possible to build the spaceship that the suggestion is attempting to force on everyone, and it's already efficient to do so for large 10K+ SPM base, hence why the whole point is said "moot" by OP.

Posted: **Fri Nov 07, 2025 4:15 am**

mmmPI wrote: Fri Nov 07, 2025 2:43 am I think h.q.droid is saying that it's more efficient NOT to use storage ship at this size, it's already currently possible to build the spaceship that the suggestion is attempting to force on everyone, and it's already efficient to do so for large 10K+ SPM base, hence why the whole point is said "moot" by OP.

Yes, I mean that. I didn't realize I was probably misunderstood.

Posted: **Fri Nov 07, 2025 8:56 am**

mmmPI wrote: Fri Nov 07, 2025 2:43 am I disagree it's fairly well explained by several players that they enjoy doing it, that's one point, allowing various build, instead of having only one way to try and min-max, there are different concepts that can be weighted against each other when discovering the game. You say yourself that some things were not immediatly clear for you when you started to use space age, so you most likely had various options to consider to pick the best depending on the situation. ( level of research, size of base , objectives ... ).

Diversity is nice of course, but it’s definitely not more important than balance. If something is valuable (as promethium science obviously is, as the final and most advanced product of the entire game, pretty much “the ultimate item”), getting it must have a certain difficulty associated with it. The most important thing is whether or not its difficulty is proportional to its value. Diversity is good, but definitely not a higher priority than this. If it turns out that some diversity has to be sacrificed in order to fix balance, that’s kind of unfortunate but ultimately necessary.

Another point was that your proposition doesn't address what you described as a problem. ( Removing belt storage option to enforce storage bay instead )

It did though. Remember that cargo bays don’t stop spoilage

. Any form of promethium storage would have been impossible. Belt, bay, machine with set recipe, it wouldn’t have mattered. The suggestion itself works just fine, the only problem is the fact that it was “built on a faulty foundation”, and adresses a problem that isn’t actually real

Posted: **Fri Nov 07, 2025 10:50 am**

CyberCider wrote: Fri Nov 07, 2025 8:56 am Diversity is nice of course, but it’s definitely not more important than balance. If something is valuable (as promethium science obviously is, as the final and most advanced product of the entire game, pretty much “the ultimate item”), getting it must have a certain difficulty associated with it. The most important thing is whether or not its difficulty is proportional to its value. Diversity is good, but definitely not a higher priority than this. If it turns out that some diversity has to be sacrificed in order to fix balance, that’s kind of unfortunate but ultimately necessary.

You do appear to be willing to take part on the discussion after all

But here i don't share your argument, because it is based on what i feel is a misconception that the balance is skewed only toward belt storage currently, i don't share that view. Also I wish there was "more" ways to try and handle the logistic puzzle as i don't think it's a problem to balance if there exist multiple moderatly efficient ways to play that are part of the choice offered to players. Belt storage sounds optimal for a segment , a share, of the bases players makes, but not all the time. I feel this is part of the depth of the game.

CyberCider wrote: Fri Nov 07, 2025 8:56 am It did though. Remember that cargo bays don’t stop spoilage . Any form of promethium storage would have been impossible. Belt, bay, machine with set recipe, it wouldn’t have mattered. The suggestion itself works just fine, the only problem is the fact that it was “built on a faulty foundation”, and adresses a problem that isn’t actually real

You can bring lots of overgrowth soil in storage bay, and recycle them for eggs when you need, thus in practice bypassing any kind of spoilage. You can also use a ship like the one h.q.droid linked, you can use them now and similarly if the suggestion was introduced, thus to me you're only removing some options with that suggestion, it's not really adressing the problem of "belt storage existing", because it leads to replacing them by storage bays if you want to have a similar design of storage ship, which will still be possible.

Posted: **Fri Nov 07, 2025 9:24 pm**

CyberCider wrote: Mon Nov 04, 2024 8:19 pm
Why?
Two words: Belt storage. That terrible, brainless cheese strategy still exists, and people still use it, even after the recipe rebalance that was done before release.

I cant help but think... that factorio is a sandbox game? if you dont like a stratery that is only in the post-game, that doesnt completely break balance - dont use it? you still need a massive ship to do said belt storage, its not like you can plop down 50 belts and store hundreds of promethium chunks

edit: also, this'd fuck with any mod that has the crazy idea of making promethium an ingredient in something that isnt the science pack, like one of my own mods

Posted: **Sat Nov 08, 2025 9:38 am**

mmmPI wrote: Fri Nov 07, 2025 2:43 am
Promethium science packs used to spoil, it's unlikely it comes back, nor on the chunks themselves imo.

when was this? I can't find any mention in the changelogs of promethium science packs ever having had spoil time.

Posted: **Sat Nov 08, 2025 12:21 pm**

juliawtapp wrote: Sat Nov 08, 2025 9:38 am when was this? I can't find any mention in the changelogs of promethium science packs ever having had spoil time.

If it ever was the case (and I sort of vaguely remember that it might have been), it was before the full release of Space Age, and we had only heard of it from playtesters.

Posted: **Sat Nov 08, 2025 12:28 pm**

MrSmoothieHuman wrote: Fri Nov 07, 2025 9:24 pm I cant help but think... that factorio is a sandbox game? if you dont like a stratery that is only in the post-game, that doesnt completely break balance - dont use it? you still need a massive ship to do said belt storage, its not like you can plop down 50 belts and store hundreds of promethium chunks

edit: also, this'd fuck with any mod that has the crazy idea of making promethium an ingredient in something that isnt the science pack, like one of my own mods

The editor, and the former sandbox mode (hmm I wonder why it was named that) are sandboxes, yes. But freeplay is not. If there are objectives and obstacles, and if items have cost and value, that’s not a sandbox. In a sandbox there is no in-game motivation to do anything, and there are no challenges besides self-imposed ones. And freeplay doesn’t fit this description at all. In freeplay some things are just meant to be hard, and if they aren’t in practice despite being meant to, that’s a design failure. And I don’t like to see those in a game that I like.

But this is borderline off-topic

I’ve already said that I’ve gone back on this suggestion, as it was based on a misconception. I am now aware that belt storage and crafting in flight both have pretty much the same requirements, one isn’t significantly different from the other as I had previously mistakenly assumed.

Posted: **Sat Nov 08, 2025 7:13 pm**

CyberCider wrote: Sat Nov 08, 2025 12:21 pm
juliawtapp wrote: Sat Nov 08, 2025 9:38 am when was this? I can't find any mention in the changelogs of promethium science packs ever having had spoil time.
If it ever was the case (and I sort of vaguely remember that it might have been), it was before the full release of Space Age, and we had only heard of it from playtesters.

I see. Thanks for the explanation, I could see that.

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