This is a really good idea, and it looks nice !

I tested all the stuff, and it is quite fun too. Sensors are not really hard to add in the base, thanks to their small size. I first thought that collectors have to be in the yellow range, but fortunately no.

I like the watercooled computer too, really fun to see it powering a steam engine.
The punched card is definitely cheap, which is a really good idea since it needs wood, so you can't really automate its production input.

However, yellow science is really too expensive ! With that tier 2 speed modules, it costs 350 copper for 2 bottles. Maybe just put 3-5 processors with the battery and the data for the recipe ?

Finally, I think the tech tree is a bit messy. Sensors need medium power poles. The tech enabling sensors doesn't require them, but the second requires power poles tech and doesn't use them for data cleaning...
You only need one red circuit to make one collector, then your blue science pack doesn't need any plastic, that's weird.
Maybe you can replace the mining drill by red circuits in the blue recipe to make the game go more on your data based science : i.e. you won't need to destroy mining drills to learn new things, you will just use the data collected.

Speaking about that, I think that mining drills should also provide data with sensors if it's not already the case.

Thanks! After last weekend's play through I think I agree with you that better recipe balancing is needed for both blue and yellow science. Purple seemed OK.

I'm considering changing the sensor recipe to require a red circuit instead of green, and replacing electric mining drills with sensors in the blue science recipe.

I'm unsure how to collect data from mining drills. Crafting machine entities have products_finished which is cheap and easy for the sensors to monitor. But afaics (still learning the Factorio Lua API) mining drills don't have a similar metric for ore mined.

Hmm...

Red for sensors makes sense for the gameplay : oil processing, plastics and red chips preparing for blue science as usual for making the sensors.

I didn't find anything in the API which can be used for drills production... maybe with a script modifying the mining drill ?

One frustating thing is the computer that requires blue chips, but needed to make production science packs. Blue chips are really "Hi-tech" item components, and making production science just use electric engines and furnaces which just need green science to make (you just use 250 blue bottles to unlock the recipe), so it's really low tech to get production science, but it's quite costly, which makes sense since it's production oriented.
And your tech tree adds a hierarchy between purple and yellow, it's not in the game spirit.

Any ideas on what to replace the computer blue circuit dependency with?

It's possible three tiers of data science should have three tiers of crafting machine. Collector -> ??? -> Computer. Perhaps a Difference Engine.

Yes I think the simplest way to do it is simply with another machine, I'll say Collector -> Calculator -> Computer.

Is there a way to get some data from turrets also ? Will be quite interesting to have some data based on alien shot to help create new weapons.

And maybe with different machines (collector, calculator and computer) you can have slightly different recipes/game mechanics. Maybe analysing data cost few resources but have a big crafting time, and you're somehow encouraged to make an array of computers (with the really fun water cooling).

After cycling to work (best time to think!) I'm going to try:

Collector -> Computer -> Server Rack

The Computer cost will reduce without blue circuits.

The Server Rack will be an assembler that treats modules like 1U servers, has 12+ module slots, and possibly also a proximity bonus to encourage close datacenter-like layouts while still dealing with the cooling pipes. As you suggested, the recipe cost of analysed data will go up a lot.

Awesome, that would be epic !

Man this mod is soo good

Man this mod is soo good