Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Beginning (red-only, possibly through red-green) science tech isn't affected by the full strength of the science multiplier

What ?

The science cost multiplier is a cool setting that can alter the way you play the game. At lower levels, it can help nudge you to expanding and creating outposts earlier than you'd like instead of turtling around the starting resource patches and at higher levels, it can force you to spend time with and master technology that you normally just skip in favor of leaping all the way up the tech tree. The one problem with the current system, in my opinion, is that the multiplier also affects the first few techs you need to actually start building a factory. The costs, and hand crafting times, for the first tech - automation 1 - quickly reach absurd levels that make higher science multiplier playthroughs next to impossible for all but the most hardened fans. I propose a scaling system for the first few key techs - Automation 1 could always cost the same (10 science packs) or be affected by only a fraction of the multiplier. The next few techs could gradually move towards using the full multiplier, until as you unlock green science the full multiplier is in effect.

Why ?

Allowing Automation 1 to be affected by the full cost of the science multiplier means that high-multiplier runs are not practically possible - hand crafting time for that first tech quickly reaches multiple hours. Adding some, er, scaling to the scaling would allow players to at get a couple key techs in place before the brunt of the science cost comes to bear - while it's not unusual to see Factorio players spending hundreds of hours on a single map, often with multiple bases built and demolished over time, I think most people would agree that the real "meat" of the game comes after you start automating your factory. There's just not really any point (in my opinion, I'm sure there are some who disagree) to keeping a player at the handcraft-only/burner stage for multiple play sessions over several days - no matter how big you can build your base, you have no way to defend it and at most, you can only use about 3 iron plates per second (2 iron plates per science pack, 5.5 second crafting time, you can only craft one science pack at a time).

In short I understand why the burner/pre-automation stage of the game is there, but I think there could be some benefit in not extending it's length regardless of the science multiplier chosen.