Right to the point here, Techtonica’s UI isn’t the best, and it becomes really hard to figure out ratios to math things out. Less an issue for Assemblers, but all other tools only give you info when they are running.

Blast Miners + Blast Smelters are the best example and it took my much too long to figure out their math. They operate on rather simple rules:

Blast Miner

• Cycles every 12 seconds, so 5 times a minute
• It will consume ALL the Blast Charges deposited every cycle. Max is 20 you can insert
• Depending on your research level, you will get increasing amounts of chunks per amount of Blast Charges. 1:1, 3:2, 5:3, 10:4, 15:5. If you don’t have the research, the charges are simply wasted.

Blast Smelter

• Cycles every 12 seconds, so 5 times a minute
• It will consume ALL the Blast Charges deposited every cycle. Max is 20 you can insert
• Depending on your research level, each charger will increase output to 1x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 10x if the corresponding raw material is inserted.
• It only ever needs 1 Blast Charge to reach this amount.

The result of this is that the Miner actually has a math problem, as the # of charges has an impact on the output. The Smelter only ever needs one, and that math is rather simple to sort out.

Math Time

The larger challenge in all this relates entirely to Inserter speed, belt speed doesn’t mean much at any point. Reminder that:

• Basic Inserters: 20/m
• Long Inserters: 15/m
• Fast Inserters: 40/m
• Filter Inserters: 30/m
• All others use stacks, so the math is only relevant to put the charges in temporary storage.

Belt splitter math is next, a you cannot prioritize outputs, everything is split equally. This means that you can only work on factors of 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on. (Truthfully you can work with odd numbers, but the belt math becomes stupid.)

With that, Smelters are actually really easy, as each need 5 per minute. A Basic Inserter shoots out 20/m, so split to 4 Smelters in 2 stages is enough (split in half, then split those halves). You can use Fast Inserters to split to 8 with the same logic. Assuming you have a storage box, that’s 1 inserter leading to belt pathing, so technically you can have 7 outputs. Technically a lot of things can happen. Still, it’s simple enough to make work and really hard to mess up.

Miners are a right nightmare and I would strongly recommend only using 1 Blast Charge per cycle until you unlock the ability to mass produce with Crusher tech. The production ratios just get stupid otherwise. At 1 charge, easy peezy, same thing as Smelters above.

In the late game (assuming you don’t have infinite mining nodes) you’ll worry about vein exhaustion and want to increase the ratios. Recall, 5 cycles per minute, and 15 per cycle, meaning 60 per Miner per minute. There are no inserters where that math works so you’re left with 2 options.

• Option 1: Use a combination of a Fast Inserter (40) + Basic Inserter (20) on a single belt to the miner.
• Option 2: Use a Mk1 Belt, a Stack Inserter (as long as it’s over 120), and split it once. That will give 60 per belt.

• At 2 per cycle, that’s 10 and you should split a Basic Inserter to 2 Miners
• At 3 per cycle, that’s 15 and you should saturate a belt and use a Long Inserter on the miner
• At 4 per cycle, that’s 20 and you should saturate a belt and use a Basic Inserter

The reward for this math problem is producing slabs of material, which is absolutely game changing and the only way to run machines in the Crusher phase (floors 12+). It also blends well with a more complex production chain involving powders, as production of slabs can double – at the cost of triple the production complexity.

I do enjoy solving math problems, and Techtonica’s sparse UI means that there’s a lot of trial an error required to solve it out. Nearly every other factory game supports the concept of saturated manifolds, and this is a true standout example of an exception. Good luck!