Lab

The lab is the building used to perform research in Factorio. Science packs are inserted into labs to progress the currently selected technology, and the rate at which a lab consumes packs depends on its research speed bonuses, module effects, and base lab speed. The research screen shows the cycle time for a technology, while the lab’s actual consumption rate is determined from that time and the lab’s effective speed.

The effective research speed of a lab can be treated as the product of its base lab speed, research speed bonus, and module speed effects. From that, the adjusted cycle time is calculated, and the number of science packs consumed per second can be found by dividing the number of labs by the adjusted cycle time. In practical terms, more labs or higher speed bonuses increase the rate at which a science setup must supply packs.

A useful simplification is that, when all labs have the same research speed bonus and base lab speed, pack demand can be expressed directly from the displayed research cycle time. This makes it easy to estimate how many science pack production lines are needed to keep a research array running continuously.

• The biolab has twice the speed of a regular lab, but it also consumes science packs half as fast.
• Because of that, a biolab consumes science at the same rate as a regular lab of equal quality.
• To determine how many labs are needed for a target science pack throughput, rearrange the consumption formula using the desired packs per second, the technology’s cycle time, the lab research speed bonus, module effects, and the lab’s base speed.