With last week’s power plant completion I was nearly at the point of kicking off production of the various Phase 4 space elevator shipment parts.

Nearly.

The only remaining part not already in production was the modest but expensive Electromagnetic Control Rod. So, armed with a few key alternate recipes and the knowledge of exactly where I wanted to construct the factory, I set to work… after complicating the task by doing some math and making a big decision.

My original thinking was to aim for 20 units per minute as I’d done in a previous save. That number had actually been insufficient but only because I’d built a 20-generator nuclear power plant in that save, and it basically takes 1 “ECR” for one generator’s worth of Uranium Fuel Rods. I had zero overhead for things like, oh, building space elevator parts needed to “save humanity” or whatever. My nuclear plans are considerably more modest this time… at least as of this writing. I could aim for 20/min again and probably be okay, to be sure, but… what if I went bigger? Why artificially limit myself? Why not… double that target? The SW coastal location provides plenty of iron and copper, and thanks to the Iron Pipe alternate recipe that’s most of what the project needs (due to removing the need for coal to make steel).

The problem was Quickwire. I surveyed my existing production (and made some improvements) but in order to get 40/min ECRs I need about 800/min Quickwire, and I lacked available existing capacity to cover that. Solution: Drone in additional Quickwire from elsewhere (after building a whole new factory, of course). Like… oh, how about that pure-quality node right near the Hub, the one that’s… out on a hunk of rock that seems to be floating over an endless deadly abyss?

Uh. Sure, great, let’s do that. Have I mentioned my intense fear of heights? Good.

It was during this “expansion site Quickwire” build that I realized a critical limitation would need addressing some time in Phase 5: My conveyor belts cap out at 780/min capacity. That’s a few items-per-minute shy of the 800 I need for this ECR factory. Now, that isn’t a huge problem right now because I don’t need the full 40/min output.

But… it means I need to remember to go back and re-belt both the Quickwire source site and the ECR factory, start to finish, for every part of the production line involving the Quickwire itself. This includes the drone delivery segments. Won’t that be fun for Future!Me? You bet. But that’s his problem.

With the Quickwire sourced (twice, as I’m supplementing the drone-delivered stuff with some rail-delivered supplies from the nearby Computerworks) all that remained was to build a couple rows of refineries, a whole mess of iron smelters, some constructors to knock out the necessary Wire (the non-Quick variety) and “Steel” Pipe (actually made of iron), then feed all of that into three stacks of assemblers.

It still needs beautification but that’s going to wait until I have the Mk6 belts, because I’ll have to dig all around in this thing at that point anyway. It’s a valid reason, I tell you!

And with this, nothing stands between me and getting Phase 4 shipment parts made. I mean, other than… me. What distraction will delay that project, I wonder..?