I have to say, Vulcanus is a really enjoyable experience. The enemies are straightforward and won’t attack, the materials feel borderline infinite, and the new equipment here is game changing with an inherent 50% productivity boost. The productivity boost has massive impacts, notably on scale of the factory and importantly, power consumption.

Mini Bus to Main Bus

The mini bus concept is rather simple. You need just enough material to go through it to supply the creation of metallurgic science, which is surprisingly little. Sulfuric Acid, Lava, Coal, Calcite, Water, and Lubricant are all you need here. The first 4 are easy to get. Water comes from a Calcite reaction, and Lubricant comes from Heavy Oil, also from Calcite.

The mini-bus should be enough to create all the basic materials you need, including Foundries + Big Miners. Red Logistics + Bots should be shipped in from Nauvis, as needed.

Only once you have this part down will it make much sense to extend your area to include Tungsten mining. There’s ample on the ground to keep nearly every other part working smooth.

Power Consumption

One bit that I really didn’t think much about on Nauvis is how power is consumed, or rather mitigated. You can only ever hit -80% consumption, which is 2x Mk2 Efficiency Modules. More than than is wasted. Clearly this changes if you have other modules around, so math away. I never found the need to upgrade my power grid from first landing until I left.

Big Bus

Once you do have a Tungsten mine available, time for a main bus. This one will include all the base Foundry material + liquids. Iron plates, gears (you will need 2 belts), steel, copper plates, tungsten, low density structures, and rocket fuel. Iron rods aren’t all that useful at large scales, and concrete is more for aesthetics.

The metal products should be linked to 2 foundries, which should fill a green belt full of material (60) by the end. All stone should be converted to landfill and belted to lava for disposal (unless you really want to have a ton of concrete). These production lines should be at the start of the big bus.

The liquid production will need it’s own dedicated plant. Coal Liquefaction is your best bet for Heavy Oil, then your standard oil setup from there (Water, Lubricant, Light Oil). I build Rocket Fuel near here as well since it needs Light Oil.

Green Belts

This is the the gold mine of Vulcanus, Mk4 belts give you 60 throughput, which is a substantial upgrade and they are practically free when produced here. Recall that all logistics are progressive, so that Mk4 belts require Mk3, Mk3 require Mk2, and Mk2 require Mk1. Foundries have an inherent 50% productivity rate, and if you put 4x productivity modules in there, it’s ~75%. With 12 Foundries, you can quite easily pump out couple thousand belts in a few minutes and they will completely replace all belts laid from this point forward.

Circuits

Green Circuits can be made in a single assembler as the materials here are free and the demand quite low. Red circuits are only used for constructing splitters and much less than you’d think. Shipping in 1000 will be enough for a very long time.

Blue circuits… this is going to be a problem. You will need a handful for green splitters, but the real sink is going to be rocket parts. You’ll need to ship in a good 2000 if you want to export science reliably. As long as Nauvis isn’t in the middle of a production spurt, this should be simple enough. This problem goes away after Fulgora.

Prep for Fulgora

Fulgora is my preferred 2nd choice, as it provides some mostly quality of life updates and does a great job to introduce you to quality scaling. It absolutely requires Big Miners (40) and Green Belts (2000) in order to function, as the scale of production is like nothing else you’ve seen. Foundries (20) are helpful for a specific ore. You’ll need pretty much the same things you did when you landed on Vulcanus, except Fulgora has no solar. Fulgora does not need any Calcite. Once you have the materials ready, head out to space.