Nova Lands All Items Crafting Time

The following is a work in progress. I’ll keep adding to it and updating/editing it.

SPOILERS: the existence of nearly all the items and buildings I mention in this guide is not a spoiler, since the tech and skill trees mention them from the start of the game. Only a few items and/or buildings I’ll mention are not found in the tech tree. However, I won’t write about how you’re supposed to get them or at what stage of the game. If possibly learning about the existence of an item or a building by reading this guide sounds like a spoiler to you, then don’t read past this point and come back when you’ve finished the game. I hate spoilers, so I fully understand.

Purpose of this guide
This guide is mainly for one thing. To provide easy to read item crafting durations. That’s it. Using those, it should be easy for you to balance your factory’s production. Which, of course, is not needed at all to finish the game.

Should you try to balance everything perfectly? No. A growing factory requires building materials. By definition, you can’t balance those building materials perfectly, you have to produce a surplus. I’m not even that crazy about ratios, truth be told. It’s just that I got to the endgame, where items take a while to produce. I was underproducing some items, so I made more of them. Then I was low on something else because of that. And it never ended. I started taking notes about crafting times to know what was going on. This here guide is just that, me sharing my notes.

What is that time unit I’m using?
Using seconds or minutes would have been silly. Instead I decided to take an item that is crafted pretty fast, at least compared to most items, and use its crafting time as my basic time measure unit. That item is Plastic. Plastic crafting time will vary through the game, based on many things. Namely: overclocking, lubricant, skills. But overall, all crafting speeds end up being boosted equally, or near equally. For example, overclocking something at +50% while the rest is at +0% should not happen. The same way, if you start using lubricant, all refineries and assemblers should be using it. Eventually, you’ll also have all production related skills unlocked. So, the fact that Plastic gets a speed boost or not is not a big deal. Simply because everything (well, almost everything) will get the same speed boost, sooner or later. In terms of ratios, producing Plastic three or six times faster changes nothing if everything else is also produced three or six times faster.

So, the amount of time it takes to produce one Plastic is my time unit. That time unit needs a name. I’ll call it a “tic“. How convenient, wait one tic, get one Plastic.

In some cases, a tic won’t be good enough to measure time and we’ll need a time unit that always has the same length, no matter what. And here it is:

a THICC is defined by the time a refinery takes to craft 1 Plastic, when that refinery only benefits from one speed boost, the +25% to speed skill. No lubricant, no overclocking.

(Next paragraph is just me yapping and you can skip reading it)
You may wonder, why keep that +25% bonus and not go with the longest of tics? Mostly laziness on my part. I need to run my tests in a world where I have access to everything. So I started using my first game world, in which all skills are unlocked including all +25% speed skills. At one point I thought about starting over with a fresh world, but I also realised that since almost everything is getting a +25% speed boost, it was not a huge deal. If I wanted to test let’s say Barns, I could always adjust my numbers knowing that Barns don’t benefit of a speed boost. But as I kept testing, some very odd observations started happening. Why is it that when testing for how long lubricant lasts, only because of the +25% speed the results are nice numbers like 3 and 6? If it was not for the +25%, the results would be 2.4 and 4.8, which are awfully tough to measure with my methods. Same for Nuclear Plants, a battery fuels one for exactly 3 THICCs. At this point, I’m starting to believe that the game devs themselves established some game ratios and items durability using the +25% speed as default. End of my little story. Back to the guide.

The following charts give the duration of a production cycle for an item, measured in tics.

1x Lubricant oil 0.5 tic (1)
1x Super cooler fluid 0.5 tic
1x Super fertilizer 0.5 tic
1x Biofuel bottle 0.5 tic
1x Superglue 0.5 tic
1x Plastic 1 tic
1x Plasteel 1 tic
1x Super lubricant 1.5 tic (1) (2)
1x Reinforced super metal 2 tics
1x Behemuttium battery 8 tics(1) If you are using lubricant in only some refineries or assemblers, tics math gets funky. For example, without lubricant, Plastic and Plasteel are both 1 tic. So, one refinery making Plastic will feed exactly one refinery making Plasteel. If only Plastic refineries are using lubricant, then the Plasteel 1 tic should be considered 3 tics or 4 tics, depending on the lubricant type. The tic ratio being 1:3, one Plastic refinery will feed 3 Plasteel refineries, or 1:4 for Super lubricant. If both use the same lubricant type, then the chart is holding, so 1:1. Mixed lubricant types? Then the ratio is 3:4.

(2) Super lubricant takes three times longer to make as lubricant does (1.5 tic v. 0.5 tic). However, it also lasts twice as long in all machines. That means that by upgrading to Super lubricant, you are now using half the Cornilia and Glass bottles you were using for your regular lubricant production, since Super lubricant lasts twice as long. Which is a good thing, obviously.
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How many refineries making lubricant do you need?
Short answer:
Go with 1 refinery per 12 machines using lubricant. You will produce more than enough lubricant that way. You can always dismantle some of the refineries making lubricant later if the surplus are piling up.

Long answer:
Simple question, not that obvious to answer.
First, how long can 1 lubricant oil boost a machine speed for? 3 THICCs. (see intro for a definition of THICC) And it is always 3 THICCs. Be it a refinery or an assembler, crafting whatever it can craft, a lubricant oil will always boost it for 3 THICCS worth of production. If the machine is not producing, the lubricant stops being used.

If a refinery is crafting lubricant oil without any speed boost except the +25% to speed skill, it would produce 6 lubricant oil during those 3 THICCs (as seen in the chart above, a lubricant oil takes 0.5 tic to craft). But we can assume that our refineries will be using lubricant oil, multiplying their speed by 3. Meaning that the 6 lubricant oil produced during those 3 THICCs would become 18 lubricant oils. In other words, while a lubricant oil lasts, a refinery can produce 18 of them. So 1 refinery produces enough lubricant oil to boost 18 machines.

Same calculations for the Super lubricant, but it lasts twice as long, so 6 THICCs. It takes 1.5 tic to produce one. And finally, the speed multiplier is 4, not 3. And the answer is, 1 refinery produces enough Super lubricant to boost 16 machines.

However, In both cases, you’d have to adjust the numbers if you don’t have the skill that boosts refineries by +25%, making it a bit worse, or if you’re overclocking your refineries, making it better. Depending on those 2 factors:

18 machines could drop to 14.4 (minimum) or rise to 27 (maximum)
16 machines could drop to 12.8 (minimum) or rise to 24 (maximum)

Behemuttium batteries and Nuclear Plants
What does it take to keep a Nuclear Plant running at all time? How many refineries producing batteries (I’ll use the term battery and drop the Behemuttium part) are needed per Nuclear Plant?

First thing to know, 1 battery fueling a nuclear plant lasts 3 THICCs.

Compare that to the battery 8 tics production time and the ratio we get is 8:3, meaning that 8 refineries producing batteries would feed 3 nuclear plants. Or that 3 refineries are required to power a single nuclear plant. That probably sounds horrible but remember, this 8:3 ratio implies that the refineries are only boosted by one thing, the +25% skill bonus. No lubricant, no overclocking. There are too many possible scenarios to list them all, but here are 3 that can be viewed as thresholds.

1) +25% skill bonus and lubricant Oil, no overclocking ==> 1:1
2) only boosted by Super lubricant, nothing else ==> 1:1
3) +25% skill bonus, Super lubricant and 1.35x or better overclocking ==> 1:2

Those are practical ratios, in fact they all give a tiny, tiny battery surplus.

1x Electronic parts 4 tics
1x Smart sensor 4 tics
1x Computer modules 8 tics
1x Advanced electronic parts 8 tics (1)
1x Supercomputer module 8 tics
1x Super control unit 8 tics
1x Hypercomputer module 16 tics(1) Important when establishing ratios: the recipes that use AEP use 2 AEP per cycle.
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18x Bricks (N/A)
3x Charcoal < 0.30 tic (1)
3x Iron 0.67 tic
3x Copper 0.67 tic
3x Titanium 4 tics(1) 1 furnace producing charcoal is enough to fuel 3 furnaces producing iron (or copper), with a small coal surplus. 3 furnaces producing charcoal are enough to fuel 10 furnaces producing iron (or copper). A single furnace producing charcoal is enough to fuel 20 furnaces producing titanium.
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Okay, there are many things worth writing about here.

No data about bricks?
No data about bricks. Keep one furnace producing them, go get bricks there when you need some. Bricks have no use except for building in the early game and for something else that I won’t spoil. But bricks are not part of any production chain.

Efficiency gain
Tier 2 furnaces produce faster than their Tier 1 versions. They are also more efficient. For example, 40 iron ore will make 20 ingots in Tier 1 furnaces and make 30 iron ingots in Tier 2 furnaces. Same thing for fuel. You’ll use the same amount of charcoal in both cases, but get more iron ingots out of it.

What’s the copper and iron furnaces to steel electric furnaces ratio?
At smaller scales, 1:1:1, it’s that simple. If you go up to 8 furnaces producing iron and 8 furnaces producing copper, then you can fully feed 1 extra steel. In other words, 8:8:9. That being said, extra iron is needed to produce lenses at some point. There’s also the fact that until you unlock a specific skill, you’ll need extra iron and copper for new buildings, to craft robots and some other things. Extra furnaces for iron and copper are a good idea.

Furnaces can’t use lubricant.
If you have read the part of the intro that is about tics, you can see where I’m going with this. As long as you are not producing and using lubricant, everything is fine. Once you start using it, you’re making assemblers and refineries work 3 or 4 times faster while furnaces’ speed remains unchanged.

Let’s say that before you started using Lubricant oil, you had 3 refineries producing Plasteel (which requires steel) and that you were producing enough steel to feed those 3 refineries. When you start using Lubricant oil, which makes your refineries work 3 times faster, your production chain balance changes a lot. You’re now using 3 times the amount of steel that you were using not long ago. That’s just common sense, isn’t it?

Simply calculate how many steel furnaces you’ll need based on the tic charts and at the end multiply the result by 3. Or by 4 in the case of Super lubricant.

3x Glass 0.67 tic
3x Glass Bottles 0.67 tic (1)
3x Steel 1 tic (2)
3x Lenses 1 tic
3x Behemuttium Cells 4 tics(1) a Glass bottles production cycle uses 2 Glass

(2) For the iron to copper to steel ratio, see the Items produced in Tier 2 furnaces section.
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Glass to Glass Bottles ratio
That ratio is 2:3
Meaning that 2 furnaces producing Glass can feed exactly 3 furnaces producing Glass bottles. But you should have extra furnaces producing Glass, for construction and/or Lenses production.

Glass bottles to Lubricant ratio
The following calculations are made assuming that 1) refineries and furnaces get the same speed bonus from skills 2) the refineries that are producing lubricant are using that lubricant type and 3) refineries and furnaces get the same speed bonus from overclocking.

For Lubricant oil, 4:3
meaning that 4 Tier 2 electric furnaces producing Glass bottles can feed 3 refineries producing Lubricant oil.

For Super lubricant, roughly 2:3
meaning that 2 Tier 2 electric furnaces producing Glass bottles can feed 3 refineries producing Super lubricant, with a small Glass bottle surplus. (while 2:3 is practical, the real ratio is 16:27)

100x Charcoal < 2 tics (1)
150x Iron < 7 tics (2)
150x Copper < 7 tics (2)
150x Titanium 42 tics (3)(1) Faster than 2 tics, but by the smallest of margins
(2) Real close to 7 tics
(3) 42 tics is a decent approximation. If the reality is 37, then I miscalculated somewhere. If it’s 43.2 then it’s a 3% error, and I can live with it. My measures can only be so precise.
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The previous chart is not very friendly to work with, one might prefer production per tic instead. Like this:

Charcoal > 50 / tic
Iron 21.5 / tic
Copper 21.5 / tic
Titanium 3.6 / tic

To put those number in perspective,
50, 21.5 and 3.6 would be
10, 4.5 and 0.75 if we calculated production per tic for Tier 2 furnaces.
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What is the speed difference between Tier 2 and Mega furnaces?
Close to 5x.

What is the efficiency difference between Tier 2 and Mega?
None. Using x raw resources will make the same amount of finished products, Tier 2 or Mega changes nothing. That fact alone does not mean that Mega furnaces aren’t worth it.

For Mega furnaces, what is the charcoal to iron/copper ratio?
Short answer: 2:7, so 2 furnaces making charcoal for 7 furnaces making iron (or copper).
Long answer:
2:7 is 2% off what would be an exact ratio. What does that mean? It means that if you use a 2:7 ratio, your 7 furnaces will be out of charcoal 2% of the time. Each of those 7 furnaces will produce 150 ingots, wait for charcoal for a short time (skipping the production of the equivalent of 3 ingots) and then get charcoal again and produce 150 ingots. The decision is yours. Do you prefer 7 furnaces that produce like 6.86 furnaces would, or do you prefer to add an extra charcoal furnace overproducing charcoal by a lot? Note: a tier 2 furnace as that one extra charcoal furnace would be enough.

For Mega furnaces, what is the charcoal to titanium ratio?
The numbers above translate to 1:20, maybe 1:21. If you ever get to 14 Mega furnaces producing titanium and you run out of charcoal, then I miscalculated something. If you ever get to 19 Mega furnaces and they are out of charcoal 1% of the time then my question is… what are you doing with all that titanium anyway?

21.5 Iron per tic sounds like a ton of iron
Maybe it does sound like that, yes. However, you are likely to be using Super lubricant in all refineries and assemblers by now. If you want to compare apples with apples, 21.5 iron/tic will count for 5.4 iron/tic compared to your 4x faster refineries. Tics are not equivalent when calculating ratios between machines that are not benefiting from the same speed bonus. I can’t insist too much on it, it’s crucial.

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