Next we look at the ingredients for the military science. You need two walls, a grenade and one round of piercing ammo. That's three different items you need to put into the machine, which is easy enough with two input belt lines and some long-handed inserters.It's finally time to show some more science pack builds. In the past I already showed a simple build for the first two science packs. Since their recipes haven't changed in the new update, I will start by talking about science pack three, aka military science.
Instead of just showing you the finished assembly line, I want to explain how I go about building these things a little bit. So first, I'll explain some theory and then take you through the different step of building the assemblies. And yes, don't worry, at the end there will be a blueprint string with the finished assembly. I would advise you to try building it yourself first, though. It's a lot more educational than just using somebody else's blueprints.
As explained in my post about red and green science, I usually approach building these things by looking at the crafttime of the science pack I'm trying to make. If you build one assembly per second of crafting time you will get sixty science packs per minute, assuming a crafting time of 100%. There’s no proper reason to go for one science pack per second. Designing the production for these numbers is simply convenient. And for an early to mid-game base, one science pack per second should be more than enough to get you started!
The different levels of assembly machines actually have different crafting time multipliers, so the ratios don't quite work out. As I've mentioned before, in the new update you can use assembly machines level one for any number of ingredients, which we will do for the relaticely eary sciences like military.
With a crafting speed of 0.5 this means you need twice as long for one science pack. Sooner or later you should upgrade the assembly machines. For now, let's just use the level ones to save on resources though.
But enough theory, let's go through building the military science step by step.
You start by looking at the crafting time of the science pack you're making. Military science takes ten seconds to make, so that's ten assemblies for one pack per second. Ah, but you get two packs per craft! So let's start with just five machines.
Next we look at the ingredients for the military science. You need two walls, a grenade and one round of piercing ammo. That's three different items you need to put into the machine, which is easy enough with two input belt lines and some long-handed inserters.
When choosing what item to put on which belt you should pay attention to the number of required items. Items you need a lot of should go on the belt closer to the machine, because you might need fast inserters or even stack inserters to get the necessary throughput later on. Since military only needs very few of each item, this is not an issue in this particular build.
Alright, now how many items do you need? Since five machines are enough to build make one science pack per second (at 1.0 crafting speed), it's very simple. You need one grenade and ap-ammo per second. And we already know how to make one item per second, don't we? And making two per second for the walls won't be a problem either!
So you look at each item and build one assembler per second of crafting time for each item (except for the walls). That means eight machines for grenades ...
and three for ap-ammo!
Walls only take half a second. If you wnat to craft one per second, you would only need half an assembler. Luckily walls are the only item we need two of, which adds up to one whole assembler.
Now it's just a question of getting the required materials into the assembly lines. The necessary smelting etc. is not part of this build and I'm assuming you will have all of the basic materials being made somewhere in your factory (maybe transported with a main bus system?).
The only ingredient you probably don't have is basic ammo rounds, which is required for the armor piercing ones. But since we know we're making one ap-ammo per second and each round take a single basic ammo, it is super easy to know how many to build! Just like before, you look at the crafting time and see that the basic rounds take one second each. So one single assembler for basic ammo can supply all three of the assemblies for the ap-rounds.
Once you supply the assemblies with the needed materials you will get something like this:
After hooking all the assembly lines up to the correct materials, you just have to get the products to the military science assemblers and they will start producing a nice steady supply of grey science packs.
As I've mentioned above, this is all calculated for a 1.0 crafting speed. Since none of the different levels of assembly machine have a crafting speed like that, this will never quite work out perfectly. But it's a good way of thinking about these kind of things and get you started.
Since assembly machines level 1 have 0.5 crafting speed, your five military science assemblers are really slow and can't actually handle one science pack per second. So you can either double the number of science pack assemblers or cut the number of assembler for the incoming materials in half. Since I would argue you can never have enough science, let's double the science pack assembly line!
Later you can upgrade all the level ones with better assemblers. This will screw up the ratios because of the different crafting speeds for level two and level three assemblers. You can either add a couple more machines to each assembly line or just leave it as is. Unless your labs are constantly running, there's usually a bit of a backlog of materials anyway. The important part is to keep all your production lines on the same level of assembler, to keep the ratios close enough together.
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That's it for military science! I hope this hasn't just taught you how to make grey science packs, but also how to even approach building a production of any science packs you want.
I will also show the other types of science packs in the future, but probably with a less in-depth explanation of how to build them. Instead I will show the finished design and talk about what's special or important about each type of science pack.
You can find the blueprint string for the basic military science build after the cut! I have indicated what materials need to go on the incoming belts with constant combinators. You don't need to actually build them, though! As long as you have alt-mode activated they should display what item is supposed to go on the respective belt.
