Guides:Seablock Bio-guide (/u/DanielKotes)

Original reddit post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seablock/comments/qmxsay/seablock\_bioguide/

# Preface:

This will be a long guide, so lets get some things out of the way:

* ~~This is a guide to Seablock. The mod can be found on the mod page here, a 'pack' mod can be found here. For the best experience it is **highly** recommended to download it directly as a zip pack with all the correct mods from the homepage here.~~ [[ See: Guides:Installation instead]]
* The basis of Seablock is a modified Bob & Angel pack, so expect around 10x the amount of items, recipes, and buildings as you would in base Factorio. The key difference between a regular B&A playthough and Seablock being that there are no ore patches and even land itself is at a premium - you start on a single block of land that you must expand. Nearly everything comes from water, and that includes the ores. On the positive note, there is very little interaction with biters, exclusively in the form of worms that you must snipe from afar and no actual nests. This make the game more like peaceful mode, where the only worry you have is to expand the factory.
* Any talk of tiers will most often be about recipe tiers, not building tiers. For example T1 and T2 green algae is for algae from water recipe and algae from mineralized water and carbon dioxide recipe; NOT! about T1 algae farm building and T2 algae farm building.
* I will specifically not be giving any blueprints or actual in-game screenshots so as to allow for a more interesting game. What I will be providing is a general flow through the technology tree that I recommend, along with some recipe charts that you can use as a basis for your builds.
* The images were getting a bit big, so I downscaled them so as to keep reddit from crashing (too much). To get the full images plus the original graph file go here. You can either have them as an image collection to use as a guide during play, or open up the graph and edit the flow values so as to better design your factory. The graph was made in Foreman 2.0 (which is what I spent the last 2 months working on instead of doing a seablock run as I originally planned). The app is still in its development phase, so there may (and are) be bugs in it (not of the biter variety - I removed those quite early on).
* This is Part 2 of the guide that will talk about the biological processing in red & green science. Part 1 (covering the first steps to getting to green science, basic ore generation, power, landfill, circuits T0 & T1, and finally metallurgy) can be found here.

# Bio-processing (general)

Biological processing in seablock can be broken down into 3 sections, which are conveniently same same as the 3 groups dedicated to them; namely:

* Bioprocessing Nauvis (algae, wood, soil, etc)
* Bioprocessing Vegetabilis (all of your seeds and plants that grow on a farm)
* Bioprocessing Animalis (fish, puffer, biter breeding)

Furthermore you can also subdivide bio-processing into the first non-bio-science stages that dont require bio-science-packs (Optimized Biome Planners), and the later stages that do. In fact in order to get to the stage of the game where you can automate bio-science pack production you will need to spend quite a bit of bio-science packs. So, lets get started.

# Pre-bio-science:

Before even getting to the biological science packs (Optimized Biome Planners), you can get started with bio processing. In fact you already have - your first power plant will be running on algae farming (preferably T2 green algae), and your first few crafted circuits would have been built using paper from brown algae. So, time to dig in deeper.

* Research Garden processing, Farming, Garden processing 2, Arboretum 1, Agricultural planning.
* Explore your way around the nearby islands to collect any trees or gardens (desert, temperate, swamp), which should net you a couple hundred wood, some trees, gardens, and seeds. Ideally you want at least 1 of the following, though due to swamp gardens being quite rare it might not be possible:
	+ Mushredtato seed (low chance from swamp gardens)
	+ Zombieecalyptus seed (medium chance from swamp gardens)
	+ Binafran seed (high chance from desert gardens)
		- Primedeadelion is an alternative, but it is worse by around 15%.
	+ Nilaumbergine seed (medium chance from desert gardens, not as important)
* If you have gotten at least some weaponry and armor researched or if you are good at running you can explore a bit further for more gardens (your only enemies are worms), but dont go too far - the amount of worms increases quite a bit the further you get away from your starting spot.

At this point you can upgrade your power plant, assuming that you have a decent supply of gardens (preferably 5+), got some binafran or primedeadelion seeds), and you arent playing at high science cost multipliers (so your Desert Farming 1 research still costs ~32 bio-packs), you can:

1. convert 1-2 of your gardens to plant life samples (1 garden -> 32 plant life samples), and research Desert Farming 1.
2. Basic chemistry 2 (which you should already have), Blue algae processing, Engine, Automation 2, Fluid handling, Gas and oil extraction, Gas processing, Nutrient extraction, Boiler 2, Fluid burning boiler 1.
3. With all that research completed you can now upgrade from your algae based power plant to a much more efficient binafran (or primedeadelion) based power plant (go to power options).

After you built your power (or decided not to), it is time to make your way through the research tree. This will take a while, so here are a few things to do in the meantime as you are continuing research:

* Research advanced ore refining which will enable you to directly sort for iron, copper, tin, and lead through the use of catalysts.
* Research towards geodes to set up a large scale geode crushing plant to generate the large quantities of mineral sludge necessary to having a decent inflow of ores.
* Research past hydro refining to gain access to chunked ore, from where you can get into aluminum and silver metallurgy.
* Make your way to plastics, and finally to T2 circuits (advanced electronics). You can make your first plastic / T2 circuit production at this point, or just focus on research instead.
* Finally research Alien Microbe Processing 1 and Alien Farming. These are vital to getting sustainable bio-science production, as without them you are limited based on the number of gardens you managed to find in your world.

I will probably get around to doing a follow up guide on the oil & plastics, but for now lets focus on bio.

# Bio-science packs:

[[TODO: Fandom image here]] https://i.redd.it/48hnn4b05nx71.png link text=From gardens (1), From farming (2), From fishing (3)

Bio-science packs are not really complicated. They require:

1. Soil and compost (will be covered below)
2. Paper (covered in Part 1 of the guide
3. Wood (at first from chopping trees, later from a wood farm (will be covered below)
4. Alien plant life sample (at first from gardens at 1->32 ratio, later from an automated factory (will be covered below).

A simple production chain (#1) for the first few science packs is provided. Do be warned - dont convert all of your gardens to plant life samples! While they are infinite (as in you can just explore further), you might not be able to get more until you level up your military if you clear out all the easily available ones nearby.

Once you have made your way through the green research tree to Alien Microbe Processing 1 and Alien Farming, you can finally automate plant life sample production. There are two ways:

1. Through farming Mushredtato (#2). This is by far the simplest and most compact option, but it is limited in that the chances of you getting Mushredtato seeds at this point are quite low. Basically you need to find a swamp garden (rare), and then you have a 5% chance of getting a mushredtato seed from it. You can theoretically break down the swamp garden for another 5% chance at the seed, but you only get 16 plant life samples instead of 32 (so this is something to be done once you automate plant life production). The excess nutrient pulp can be simply converted to fuel oil and either voided (but why?), used in fluid burning boilers / fluid burning heat sources, or combined with charcoal to generate solid fuel (power).
2. Through fish farming (#3). A much more complicated option that goes through alien spores and red algae farming. The fish breeding cycle provides exactly the correct amount of nutrient pulp to feed back to the cycle, so an initial amount of nutrient pulp needs to be brought in to start the cycle (as with most cycles). The raw fish oil byproduct can not be voided, and instead requires thermal water and further processing before it reaches fluids that can be voided. Basically, only use this setup if mushredtatos are not available.

# Wood Production

[[TODO: Fandom image here]] https://i.redd.it/vpaq28fvlnx71.png link text=Wood products (1), Saws (2), Compost/Soil options x3 (3), Wood T1 (4), Wood T2 (5), Wood T3 (6)

So to get started. Why do we need wood?

1. Wooden board production (basis of circuits). This is a MUCH better alternative than any of the paper production paths, to the point that the only use for paper is A: pre-wood circuits, and B: bio-science.
2. Bio-science.
3. Polishing wheel. This is a blue science stage recipe that is necessary to process gems, which are themselves necessary for modules.
4. I do not consider this a worthy option, but! you can also convert wood into resin and use it to craft the higher tiers of boards (Phenolic directly, and Fibreglass with ethanol from plant or fish farming). Keep in mind that this requires 10x the amount of wood for basic wooden boards, so I personally consider pushing for liquid resin through petrochemistry worth the pain. I will revisit this in more detail later.

How do we get wood? By cutting down trees. More specifically, by providing timborer's saw blades, with a 90% chance of getting them back. Dont worry about any of the higher tiers of saw blades - they require diving into gem processing and thats honestly too much. The better alternative here is to stick to T1 saw blades (made from iron only), and just using better iron metallurgy production. As for handling the saw blade cycle, its really up to you. You can have a sushi belt of saw blades and wood with filtering, or a single line of saw blades with the returned saw blades having priority. I already mentioned that there wont be any blueprints in this guide.

Wood production: No matter which tier of seeds/trees you use, you will need some compost. There are really 2 options here, either compost some of the wood back, or use alternate compost options. As you can see, if you compost the wood you loose out on a large chunk of your wood production, so its best to look for alternate sources of compost (ex: green algae).

Wood production tiers:

1. The first tier is quite simple and has the benefit of being available quite early into green science (with no bio-science required), with just water and soil as requirements you can set up an early wood farm rather quickly, but I would recommend waiting for the later tiers if you can, or just building a small 1-2 seed generator plants.
2. The second tier is available around the same time as you would automate your bio-science production, and is the point when setting up a large wood factory becomes an option to consider. Due to the difference between T2 and T3 being just the nutrient pulp feed to the arboretum (the carbon dioxide to the seed generators being already required for fertilizer in T2), it is best to just plan your T2 wood factory in such a way that you can expand it by adding a couple more arboretums and the nutrient pulp feed to a full T3 factory without necessitating a full rebuild.
3. The last tier is a blue science tech level, but as mentioned before it isnt that much different from the second tier - and as such should be planned for when building the T2 wood factory. I provided a sample nutrient pump production chain which can be used.

# Soil and Compost

[[TODO: Fandom image here]] https://i.redd.it/h2pkzo800px71.png link text=Soil x2 (1) and Compost x5 (2)

**NOTE:** these graphs have been scaled to provide the amount of soil/compost necessary for 3 seed generators for tree farms (above section).

For soil its a bit of a give-and-take. You can either choose to make soil from mud which requires half the amount of compost but means you will need quite a bit more washing plants in order to generate the required mud, or make soil from sand which requires quite a bit less washing plants due to the higher efficiency of sand generation, but you pay for it by doubling the amount of compost you require. In all honestly its rather comparable - the amount of buildings saved by choosing sand will be payed back in the compost production, and vice versa. So pick whichever way you prefer.

For compost, there are really 4 options:

1. Use the T1 green algae recipe to make green and brown algae, and then compost them both. On the positive side, this is quite simple. On the negative side it requires quite alot of algae farms.
2. Use the T2 brown algae recipe. This requires 60% the amount of algae farms, but you need to provide salt water instead of regular water. This isnt much of a problem as a desalination plant or a couple of hydro plants will take care of it, but is still something to keep in mind. You can always pipe over the extra salt water from other parts of your factory, but its best not to unless you wish to embrace pipe spaghetti.
3. Use the T2 green algae recipe. This requires 33% the amount of algae farms, but you need to source some mineralized water (at a rate of around 3.8 crushed stone per second) plus some charcoal. Personally I consider the sacrifice worth it, but to each his own.
4. Use farming. I kind of dont recommend this option due to the complexity and building count required here (I mean, at this point you might as well just go with T1 green algae and save yourself the trouble), but I will leave the option here just in case. We use nilaubergine and zombieecalyptus to optimize sand and mud production, both of which are the best plants to use for compost production.

# Power from farming

[[TODO: Fandom image here]] https://i.redd.it/um2lnnidunx71.png link text=Optimized nutrient pump production (1), power generation alternatives x2 (2)

Actual power production from farming is something that can be set up rather early into green science, provided you have enough gardens to burn on non-return plant life samples (aka: pre-automated bio-science production; a late green science tech we covered above). The general idea is quite similar to the farming based compost production seen in the previous section, though we switch out the plants to Binafran and Zombieecalyptus to maximize nutrient pulp production.

In a bit more detail, we use the typical 5 stage washing plants to process viscous sludge into salt water and sand which go into feeding the Binafran growth. A diversion of some heavy mud water from the first stage of washing combines with all the produced mud in order to feed the Zombieecalyptus growth. Note that you can just ignore the Zombieecalyptus and convert all the mud to landfill (or to viscous mud water to be voided) if you dont want to deal with dual plantations (or dont have any Zombieecalyptus seeds).

Once Nutrient pulp is produced, we just need to convert it into Fuel oil in a gas refinery that you unlocked on your way to nutrient extraction, and feed it to your fluid burning boilers.

**Side note:** Once heat exchangers are unlocked (an early blue science tech), it is recommended to use an array of fluid burning heat sources for their neighbor bonus instead of the fluid burning boilers, as you can get a nice 33% boost to your power production.

# Completeness: compost options

[[TODO: Fandom image here]] https://i.redd.it/qg2pq10rwnx71.png

Just in case, here are the production chains for making compost out of all the seeds you can get in seablock.

# Completeness: nutrient pulp options

[[TODO: Fandom image here]] https://i.redd.it/twxdusowwnx71.png

Also just in case: options for producing nutrient pulp from seeds. Note that there are less options than for compost, and that is due to the other seeds producing by-products (such as crystal dust) which would be an annoying thing to get rid of.

# Biology Part 2 - animals

I will leave this for the next bio part. This will need to cover all the various pastes along with crystal generation and processing. This kind of starts to go into blue science territory (which is something I have less experience with), but I will give it a shot.

The immediate next part will likely focus more on the liquids / gases that are common to seablock and their generation options.