Ghostkeeper's Speedrun "Ram" Ships

[queen orchid]

MCOS Veldor a.k.a. The "RAM" ship

A modest speedrun ship. This one is not for winning factorio in 4h, but it can travel from Nauvis to Aquillo within 1 hour, enough for the achievement.

FEATURES

• The ship has no guns: it simply rams into asteroids during the whole trip. No need for expensive science. No quality items. No need to install missiles, railguns, nor any ammo.
• The ship is built right after space science is discovered. You have plenty of time to build it and load it with cargo.
• When heading to solar system edge, the ship has no factories, no asteroid processing, nothing. Just full storage, full tanks, and full luck.
• The pumps provide tight control of speed. They are enabled a few frames per second, so they spend almost no power.
• Trade off: The faster the ship travels, the more damage it takes, therefore more cargo must be loaded.
• During the ship construction, 3 tanks of each thruster fluid must be filled in this ship. You need 3 temporary chemical plants to fuel it. Remove them before departing.
• Either just collect asteroids and process them at the side of the ship, or do this:
• Send carbon and ice from a Nauvis orbital station down to Nauvis planet. Then send carbon, ice, iron ore to the ship by rocket.
• There are two DECIDER combinators: one counter and one defining when pumps should act.
• There are 4 CONSTANT combinators. The topmost is always on. The other 3 can be shut off from left to right for 4 speed modes: 90 km/s, 60km/s, 30km/s, 15 km/s.
• While you take care of handling the other planets, make Nauvis produce and send the required cargo to the ship. What cargo? It depends on how fast you want to get to the solar system edge...

Possible "TRIP MODES" from AQUILLO to SOLAR SYSTEM EDGE

Right before unlocking the Solar system edge, send the ship to Aquillo. Don't let it orbiting there for too long!

(1) Dangerously fast (40min)

• Materials: 5900 platforms, 5700 walls, 300 repair pack
• Fly the first 20.000 km at 90 km/s
• Then fly to 50.000 km at 60 km/s
• Then fly to the end at 30 km/s
• Risky (90% success rate)

(2) Fire and forget (55min)

• Materials: 5900 platforms, 5700 walls, 300 repair pack
• Fly at 30 km/s from Aquillo to the end
• Pay minimal attention after ~40min, lower speed to 15km/s if required
• Risky (95% success rate)

(3) Active mode (55min)

• Materials: ~4800 platforms, ~4700 walls, 300 repair pack
• Fly the first 40.000 km at 60 km/s
• Then fly to 80.000 km at 30 km/s
• Then fly to the end at 15 km/s
• Safe (100% success rate)

(3) Low Speed mode (1h 18min)

• Materials: ~3900 platforms, ~4000 walls, 300 repair pack
• Fly the first 60.000 km at 30 km/s
• Then fly to the end at 15 km/s
• Safe (100% success rate)

HINTS:

• Start platform production as soon as possible, this is the bottleneck. Make it be at least 0.5 platform/s if you are a fast speedrunner.
• The ship is built in Nauvis, and can travel at max speed from Nauvis to Aquillo (~7 min).
• Don't let this ship orbiting planets for too long: it is not completely shielded from all sides.
• The ship can take structural damage. It may lose up to 1 solar panel. It can lose all its cargo containers, but only when they don't hold cargo anymore. Replace them with walls immediately!
• The fuel should NOT run out, unless you fly for too long at 15 km/s.
• The ship must be sacrificed once it reaches its goal (end of game). Nothing lasts forever...

BLUEPRINT

[queen orchid]

YOUTUBE VIDEO - DEMO

Factorio Space Age - Speedrun Ram Ship - MCOS Veldor

https://youtu.be/DjziOl_t0Ac

[neat sand]

well done

why multiple fuel pumps?

[queen orchid]

Due to the pump throttling effect, two stage fuel pumps+tanks keep speed very stable. Especially if you activate them just 5 times per second.
The speed variation in this specific use case can lead to stronger asteroid damage and less predictable / risky situations: there seems to be speed thresholds which define if the asteroid should inflict a much stronger damage.
The ideal speed is actually 10 km/s, but it would take 2h 45min to reach the solar system edge. You would also need extra fuel tanks too, because you spend a lot of time just negating the planetary gravitational pull effect without effectively moving that much to the goal.
The pump and tank system don't take that much extra space compared to the wall section. You can discover nice pump+tank compact designs for any other ship too, and predefine safe speeds for given routes / distances.
You also don't have to turn the first two pumps on and off, I just did it to reduce power usage. These just need to know how much fluid are they allowed to inject into the intermediate tanks...

[queen orchid]

Ghostkeeper's Speedrun "Ram" Ships

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OGRE - A fast RAM cargoship

This lightweight 200 ton cargo ship travels at ~350 km/s, has no turrets, but requires fuel and maintenance materials from Nauvis.
Just build an Orbital Station on Nauvis to get the required fuel materials, and send them by rocket to the ship.
Since the ship does not process asteroids nor ammunition, it gets faster and lighter than other variants.
If required, cargo capacity can be easily expanded with another row of cargo bays.
The only quality items in this build are the thrusters, which impact the ship's top speed.
The ship does not use necessarily the whole amount of requested items. It depends on the chosen route.

[neat sand]

did you try any of these on higher asteroid settings?

[queen orchid]

you would have to lower the speed and/or carry more material

the damage by asteroid is the same on higher densities for the same speed

if you have 200% asteroids, you take double the damage

so you have to lower speed to half, limited to a low value of 15km/s

this means more fuel too

depending on speed, double the amount of fuel