PY - completed PY Science Pack 3 - 1650 hours checkmark
2 years ago, I made my first post-report on my PY mod progress. At that time, after 950 hours I've unlocked the Chemical Science pack: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1bbkcb0/py_completed_chemical_science_950_hours_checkmark/
Now, a 1.5-year break to complete Factorio 2.0 achievements and 700 more hours of play, I've unlocked PY Science Pack 3. A significant portion of this 'session' was spent on upgrading my trains to Mk02, redesigning/replacing the train station with faster trains and wagons with higher capacity. Naturally, I had some trouble upgrading my save to the 2.0 version, but it took no more than 5-10 hours (don't remember the exact time).
In the last few months, I've seen a few posts of other people completing PY in a much shorter time, including runs in the 'hard mode'. I consider those played MUCH faster and better than mine, but I hope my post will encourage some other players to give PY a try. Yes, my pace is much slower than many others; yet I enjoy every hour of it and focus on optimizing factory efficiency.
I play with bitters (though I disabled their evolution at some point). I also play in "almost hard mode": even though I did not enforce the "Hard Mode" mod, I avoid wasting materials and byproducts by balancing production and utilizing all subproducts.
Some interesting details about my playrun.
Science:
Earlier I was aiming for 10 SPM, but considering that each next science tier increases the needs/amount of lower tech science, I decided to aim for PY Science Pack 3 production for 30 per minute.
My current SPM is around 26, with PY Science Pack 3 production speed at 30/m, but actual consumption at 12.8 pack/m. I guess I would need to increase the number of labs of biocomputers, but even with the current speed, I unlock new techs faster than I can get good use of them.
Electricity:
My energy consumption for the last 250h is around 15 GW. The majority of it comes from 2 High-pressure Steam Turbines Mk02 that are powered by 24 Biomass Powerplants Mk02 burning Charcoal Briquettes. I also burn some Coke and leftovers of regular and refined Natural Gas.
Trains and stations:
I have 291 trains and 2481 stations so far. Yes, I do use the LTN mod. It seems like this is not the best one, but I'm not sure if I'm gonna switch to a new one.
As I already mentioned, the majority of trains were replaced with the Mk02 variant (both locomotives and wagons). This took a significant amount of time. Yet, considering the number of issues with the bandwidth I had in the earlier game, the ability to carry twice as much load with the same number of trains helps a lot.
A very unpleasant problem was that my stations were not compatible with shorter wagons, so I developed a model of a 'gradual' transition to shorter trains. I do plan to upgrade later to Mk03/04 trains, and hope my design will sustain that. I still have some Mk01 trains, but they are not in use, and I might replace them once I unclock Km03
Same as before, I have around 40% of 1-1 trains, and the rest are 1-4. Yet, the more I move the less I need trains that carry a big amount of load, and I feel like soon the majority of trains will be switched to 1-1.
Bitters:
As much as I disabled aggression, evolution and expansion for bitters. I still have many nests around and when I expand, I do some clean up with the help of Tank and a combination of defender and disruptor bots. It takes some time so I plan to start using artillery for a bigger clean-up, but that would trigger bitters to attack my otherwise undefended base. Here is the total # of kills
Milestones:
Map:
Will be happy to answer questions or accept recommendations.
Thanks for reading!