A clean slate and a fresh start, knowing some of the tech we will need to invest in later makes it much easier to plan and move forward in this game. This allows us to knock out the early research relatively quick. We are back to the point where we can start investing in interplanetary transport. I try to explain and tutorial a little as we go, this game is pretty fun so far.
https://www.patreon.com/FrancisJohn
Credits song – Retrograde by Spence
Dyson Sphere Program is a sci-fi simulation game with space, adventure, exploration and factory automation elements where you can build your own galactic industrial empire from scratch.
In the distant future, the power of science and technology has ushered a new age to the human race. Space and time have become irrelevant thanks to virtual reality. A new kind of supercomputer has been developed – a machine whose superior artificial intelligence and computing capability will push humanity even further. There is only one problem: there isn’t enough energy in the whole planet to feed this machine.
You are a space engineer in charge of a project launched by the space alliance COSMO, tasked with a massive undertaking: constructing Dyson Spheres (a megastructure that would orbit around a star, harnessing all its power and energy) to produce the energy that humanity needs. Only a few decades ago, Dyson Spheres were considered a hypothetical, impossible invention – but now it’s in your hands… Will you be able to turn a backwater space workshop into a galaxy-wide industrial production empire?
Neutron stars, white dwarfs, red giants, gaseous and rocky planets… There is a big and varied universe out there, waiting for you to gather all its resources.
Every playthrough will be unique: your universe will be procedurally generated every time you start a new game. There will be different types and distribution of stars, planets and resources. Will you manage to thrive and build your Spheres, no matter what the universe throws at you?
As a space engineer, you are expected to design your interstellar factory and production lines, not to micromanage every small package going back and forth. You have to transport materials from one planet to another, forming interstellar transport teams that gather resources and bring them to where they are needed.
Then, your resources can be transported between facilities through conveyor belts, and you’ve got the technology to help your buildings fit the grid automatically during the construction process. You’ve got the best tools COSMO can afford to build a massive-scale automated production line – the most efficient one ever seen in the universe!
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So I found an interesting dynamic with storage. if you stack them and put the bottom one to 0 capacity, you can essentially create a multi item splitter, it appears items cant be transferred from below where they are stored, but can from above, hence the bottom one being 0. This essentially creates a 18+ splitter with just 2 levels of storage. you just use a filter on the output sorter. This scales up as you stack storage higher
Welcome to the Factorio:Space Out DLC!
Why haven't you played factorio? This game just seems like a 3D factorio
FYI, you *do* need plain magnets for higher tier components. The blue cylinder thing at made from engines (name escapes me at the moment).
Also, while you're abusing the interstellar logistics, be sure to check out Gas Giant Exploitation, right next door in the tech tree. It's unlimited exploitation once you get it set up.
if you look at how many blue science you need for each research you'll notice some need less blue science packs to research than others, meaning they are all set up for you to research the lower cost techs before the higher cost techs. for example, thermal power only takes 30 while smelting takes 100 (or 120, don't remember off the top of my head), but my point still stands. so there isn't really anything weird about how the research is set up, just need to look at what you're researching before you just click "enqueue".
Not sure if this is mentioned already, but on the note of "shift+R" rotation, counter rotation can be done using the arrow keys (left – right) or num-pad directions.
I do wonder what the developers will do as the driving motivator for this game. Factorios buters are a great mechanic to move you up the tech tree to not sit still when you have a moment. I think a rival faction system like what final upgrade did would suit this game fairly well. Get a dyson sphere up and running before our competitors and make it a race a peacefull competitive race
You also need magnets for the super magnetic rings.
fuck me.. I need to restart my spaghetti mess.
Hrmm, I might be speaking out of my ass here since I don't have the game, but assuming that the developers did the smart thing and just used the latitude and longitude system to reference locations on the planets (since I do see a coordinate system in the bottom left corner), if you build in the east-west direction, the grid shouldn't converge and push your buildings out of alignment (theoretically).
I got the game & please tell me I'm not the only one that's trying to cover the whole planet with foundations
level 12 belts?!
awesome
I have seen how several Creators have set up there mid game power and I have been very impressed by them. I can't wait to see what you come up with.
Oof, looks like Francis doesn't know that you can burn Crude Oil in Thermal Power Plants for massive amounts of energy. I only built a handful of wind turbines before going all in on Oil Power.
1) Thermal Power Plants ALWAYS output 2.16 MW, no matter which fuel you use. Better fuels burn for longer though.
2) Oil is unlimited in the current version of the game.
3) Thermal Plants can burn Crude Oil for a better efficiency than Coal. You don't even need to Refine it first! Each Oil Seep can feed ~6-10 plants. That's as much power as 20-50 wind turbines (depending on the planets wind % and the Oil Seep output). The starting planet has a TON of oil seeps, 15-30 I think?
4) It's faster to build power lines to more Oil Seeps, and build Thermal Plants there, than it is to use Oil Refineries to improve the power efficiency of an existing Oil Extractor.
5) Don't bother with the second Oil Refining recipe, X-Ray Cracking. Refined Oil is a vital ingredient that bottlenecks mid-lategame science production, so you don't want to turn it into anything else. Meanwhile, the products of X-Ray Cracking are already plentiful: Hydrogen is unlimited on gas giants (and a plentiful byproduct of the first Oil Refining recipe), and Energized Carbon is the only useful product you can turn Coal into. It is usually recommended to stockpile Refined Oil instead of burning it, but if you already have a stockpile, there is no harm in doing so.
6) Once you have unlimited Hydrogen from Gas Giants, burn that instead of Oil. You can fit just as much Hydrogen on a belt as Oil, but it has twice the energy content. That means you can feed twice as many Thermal Plants from a single belt if you switch to burning Hydrogen – AND it frees up all of your oil to be used on late game science packs! A single Orbital Collector generates 200 Hydrogen in 60 seconds – faster with upgrades – and an unupgraded Logistics Vessel ferry 200 of the stuff in a 1 minute trip if you're orbiting said gas giant! If you're not orbiting the gas giant, expect an 2-8 minute round trip.
(Pro Tip: If you build extra Thermal Plants, they will store the excess oil and turn on to handle unexpected spikes in power demand.)
The magnetic coils are used later on for the 3rd teir motors. Supercharged motors
I would have watched this earlier, but I was playing DSP =D
-I'm glad to hear you've been giving the planetary logistics a go. I'm just under 12 hours into my playthrough (still my first) and on my main planet I currently have 9 planetary and 1 stellar logistics towers. My other two planets each have a stellar tower set up and running. I'm now moving onto another tier of components, so I expect those tower numbers to increase. They solve and prevent so many issues that it's a thing of beauty.
-Regarding crude oil wells, btw, I've found that you can reliably run four refineries consistently (mostly) off of one well with a ~2 p/s flow. Also, if you're going to run hydrogen heavy on your power, I would recommend getting Deuterium (sic?) refining early on. The drop rate is so very low, and if you're pumping out that much hydrogen it'll give you a a good stockpile for when you need it.
-You were mentioning something in the video about there being some kind off issue with accumulators (batteries). It sounded like you were saying they won't actually keep a base up and running, but I may have heard you wrong. In any case, I can assure you that yes, terrestrial solar + accumulators will work just fine. My last big project tonight was to set my main planet up on solar and batteries. I have 300 MW generation at peak, with 200 MW of that being solar (rest is furnaces for resource burn off, some wind). I went waaaaay overboard on the batteries, apparently (I may have around 300-400 on the planet?). In terms of numbers, the stats screen says I have, I think it was a 1.5 Tj base, with ~80 Gj of power storage. When I'm leaning on my batteries my storage drops by ~ 10 Gj down to ~70 Gj. My generation low is about 60-100 MW, so there is a slack off period where my accumulators discharge (my consumption goes from ~60 MW to ~100 MW, depending on what is running.) I'm not running an equator belt for solar (no reason, just didn't) but I am running a staggered line of patches of 100 solar per site weaving vaguely across the planet. I have a little under 1/2 the planet "covered," in that so far, and it's looking stable enough to where I'm shutting down all my old coal, oil and hydrogen furnaces, soon, depending on burnoff issues. About 10-15 more patches and I should have ~350-400 MW mean power generation with stable power storage.
-Speaking of solar, I don't know if you've run into this yet, but when you're setting up your stellar towers on your secondary planets, you do have to be able to eat that full 60 MW cost for quite a while, and it can and will peak back up to that at times. My silicon planet I had to do with a combination of coal furnaces and wind and a bit of solar and it was painful. My titanium planet was a breeze, though, because I seriously ramped up my solar and battery production beforehand. Made it much, much less painful (just make sure to set the tower down at dawn!).
The only other thing I'll say for now on the game is that it just sheer eye candy. This is the only game in the past decade where I've stopped right in the middle of what I was doing to take a screenshot. Best moment for me so far was flying beside and just below a line of 100 or so drones curving across the sky, while across and above them a gas giant was lifting above the horizon, while the local star was peeking around the edge of the gas giant. Gorgeous.
Glad to see you're up and running with a series on this. Looking forward to it.
I'm making my bus go east/west rather than north/south to avoid the alignment issues
If you have OCD build along the equator, it's perfectly square, plus it looks cool from space looping around the planet.
3D geometry is a bitch… My solution would be to increase the ratio between the planet radius and the mesh size and implement a way to automatically push the mesh discontinuities to places where the player has not built anything. On your side, you can build East-West, along parallels, instead of North-South.
I bought this yesterday because of your videos. Send help…
Hey France. I found out that if you use the breaches to put the wind turbines (power plants) that leaves you more space on the main selections of land to use for production and factories.
By far the most straight forward and well commentated play-through I have encountered thus far!
Mr. Francis John I came up with pretty funky oil cracking solution. It's based on 3x refinery modules ( 1x oil cracking and 2x x-ray cracking ) selfeeding their own hydrogen, creates a module, that turns 0,5 crude oil/s into hydrogen and en. carbon ONLY with perfect ratios using up all leftover refined oil in process. You just make enough of these modules to drain Your crude oil source – easy duplication