Smart Calculators SmartCalculators

Dyson Sphere Program Production Calculator

Plan any Dyson Sphere Program build to the ratio. Full graph solver with proliferator (增产剂) in extra-products or speedup mode, building and belt tiers, fractionation, byproduct routing, and total power — every number traceable to its formula.

Target

Target item

Electromagnetic Matrix

Science matrices

Components

Advanced components

Chemicals & fuels

Dyson & structural parts

Buildings

/min

Advanced — Proliferator (增产剂)

Spray inputs to boost every craft: more products (增产) or faster crafting (加速). Both cost extra power.

Select a proliferator tier to choose a mode.

Advanced — Buildings & belts

Assembler, smelter, chemical plant, belt tier, and Veins Utilization research.

%

Production plan · 0.10.29.21950

Total buildings

9

Buildings for Electromagnetic Matrix

3

3 needed · 3 built (100% used)

Total power

5.04 MW

Proliferator trade-off

Same 60/min Electromagnetic Matrix under three proliferator choices. Both boost modes add the same power.

No proliferator

Buildings

9

Power

5.04 MW

Mk.III · Extra products

Buildings

8

Power

11.7 MW

Proliferator/min

5.06

Mk.III · Speedup

Buildings

7

Power

10.5 MW

Proliferator/min

8

Raw resources (2)

Item Rate
Iron Ore 120/min
Copper Ore 60/min

Belts required

Every link fits on a single belt.

Power per item/min

84 kW

Which view of the chain

Production steps (6)

Step Buildings Power
60/min · Matrix Lab ×3 1.44 MW
60/min · Assembling Machine Mk.III ×1 1.08 MW
60/min · Arc Smelter ×2 720 kW
60/min · Assembling Machine Mk.III ×1 1.08 MW
60/min · Arc Smelter ×1 360 kW
60/min · Arc Smelter ×1 360 kW

Electromagnetic Matrix · 60/min · ×3 Matrix Lab Magnetic Coil · 60/min · ×1 Assembling Machine Mk.III Magnet · 60/min · ×2 Arc Smelter Circuit Board · 60/min · ×1 Assembling Machine Mk.III Iron Ingot · 60/min · ×1 Arc Smelter Copper Ingot · 60/min · ×1 Arc Smelter

Essential ratios for Electromagnetic Matrix

Step Rate Buildings
Electromagnetic Matrix 60/min ×3 Matrix Lab
Magnetic Coil 60/min ×1 Assembling Machine Mk.III
Magnet 60/min ×2 Arc Smelter
Circuit Board 60/min ×1 Assembling Machine Mk.III
Iron Ingot 60/min ×1 Arc Smelter
Copper Ingot 60/min ×1 Arc Smelter

Copy this to your guild — it updates with your settings.

Data: Dyson Sphere Program 0.10.29.21950 via factoriolab · independent tool, not affiliated with Youthcat Studio or Gamera Games.

Share
WhatsApp Telegram X Facebook Reddit

Dyson Sphere Program production calculator. Buildings, power, raw ore and the proliferator tradeoff for any recipe.

A Dyson Sphere Program production calculator returns the exact buildings, raw ore, belts and total power needed to hit any target rate. It models the proliferator in both extra-products and speedup modes, so you can see the material-versus-power tradeoff before you build.

What is a Dyson Sphere Program production calculator?

Every DSP factory eventually hits the same fork: spray your lines with proliferator (增产剂) for extra products, or for speedup? Extra-products (增产) squeezes up to 25% more output from the same inputs at Mk.III, which quietly halves how much raw ore the whole chain draws — an Electromagnetic Matrix line that pulls 120 iron-ore/min with no spray drops to 61.4 iron-ore/min once you switch to Mk.III extra-products. Speedup (加速) instead runs each recipe up to twice as fast, so you build fewer machines but keep drawing the full ore. Both cost the same working-power penalty (+150% at Mk.III), and this calculator exists to answer that fork in real numbers instead of forum rules of thumb.
Underneath the proliferator decision it does the ordinary work of a ratio planner: type a target item and an output rate (items per minute or per second) and it walks the entire recipe graph — matrices, sails, rockets, processors, all the way down to iron, copper, silicon and crude oil — returning the building count for every step, the raw-resource feed rates, the belt counts at your chosen tier, and the total power in megawatts. DSP has heavy shared intermediates (hydrogen feeds deuterium and refined oil; magnetic coil feeds half the tech tree), so the solver counts each shared item once rather than double-building it. The default screen loads Electromagnetic Matrix at 60/min on Assembling Machine Mk.III and Arc Smelters, which is the first serious ratio question most new players ask.
The second decision it settles is deuterium. You can crack it out of hydrogen in a Miniature Particle Collider (微型粒子对撞机) or drip it out of a Fractionator (分馏塔) loop, and the two routes are wildly different on cost: for 60 deuterium/min the collider burns 240 crude-oil/min and 19.68 MW, while fractionation needs 120 crude-oil/min and 6.72 MW — half the oil and about a third of the power. Flip the deuterium step between the two recipes and watch the raw-resource and power lines move.
The tool is free, runs entirely in your browser, and every step carries a show-the-math panel that prints the recipe time, building speed, proliferator multiplier and the final division, so any count can be audited line by line. That transparency is also the SEO gap it fills: the popular DSP calculators — dsp-calc.pro, dsp-ratios.com and the FactorioLab DSP dataset — are bare JavaScript apps with almost no server-rendered text, and dyson-calculator.com is a reference database rather than a decision aid, so none of them actually explains the proliferator or deuterium tradeoff on the page. Recipe data comes from the open FactorioLab project (MIT) at game version 0.10.29.

How to use the Dyson Sphere Program calculator

Four inputs take you from an empty screen to a full build sheet; the rest is per-step fine-tuning.
1. Pick your target item. Start typing in the item box and choose from the autocomplete. It defaults to Electromagnetic Matrix, but anything craftable is fair game — Magnetic Coil, Processor, Deuterium, Small Carrier Rocket, or the endgame Universe Matrix.
2. Set the rate and unit. The default target is 60 per minute; switch the unit to per second if that is how you think about your belts. Every building count is solved backward from this number.
3. Choose your proliferator strategy. Pick a tier (none, Mk.I, Mk.II or Mk.III) and a mode — extra-products (增产) for material savings or speedup (加速) for fewer buildings. This is the global default the whole tree inherits, and it is the single setting that most changes your result.
4. Set building and belt tiers plus Veins Utilization. Choose the Assembling Machine tier (Mk.I/II/III), smelter and chemical-plant tier, the conveyor belt tier (Mk.I 360/min, Mk.II 720/min, Mk.III 1800/min), and your mining Veins Utilization percentage, which lowers raw-ore demand.
5. Read the plan and the tradeoff callout. The hero card shows total buildings, the primary step's utilization and total power in MW; below it the tree breaks out every step with its buildings, belts and raw feed. A proliferator tradeoff callout puts none, Mk.III extra-products and Mk.III speedup side by side so you can see the building-count and power difference at a glance.
6. Override any step. Open a row to swap its recipe — the classic move is flipping Deuterium between the Particle Collider and a Fractionator — or to give one step a different proliferator setting than the global default. The whole tree recomputes instantly, and the show-the-math panel prints every multiplier used.

The production math, and what the proliferator does to it

Two mechanics decide every number on this page: the base production formula and what the proliferator does to it. Here they are the way the show-the-math panel prints them.
First, how much one building makes per minute:
output/min=60t×o×s×mspd×mext\text{output/min} = \frac{60}{t} \times o \times s \times m_{spd} \times m_{ext}
Reading the symbols: t is the recipe time in seconds, o is the output amount per craft, s is the building's base speed (Assembling Machine Mk.III = 1.5, Arc Smelter = 1.0, Matrix Lab = 1.0), m-spd is the speedup multiplier and m-ext is the extra-products multiplier. Then the building count is your target rate divided by that per-building output, rounded up:
buildings=⌈rtargetoutput/min per building⌉\text{buildings} = \left\lceil \frac{r_{target}}{\text{output/min per building}} \right\rceil
Work a real one. Magnetic Coil crafts 2 coils from 1 copper ingot and 2 magnet in 1 second. On an Assembling Machine Mk.III with Mk.III extra-products that is (60 / 1) × 2 × 1.5 × 1.25 = 225 coils per minute, so a single assembler covers a 60/min target at 26.7% utilization — one machine, not two.
Now the fork. Extra-products (增产) multiplies output only: m-ext is 1.125 / 1.20 / 1.25 for Mk.I/II/III, and inputs stay exactly the same. That is the whole point — you get more product for the identical ore, so demand shrinks at every earlier step and the raw-resource lines upstream fall. Speedup (加速) instead multiplies the craft rate: m-spd is 1.25 / 1.50 / 2.00, and because the recipe runs faster it consumes inputs proportionally faster too, so ore draw is unchanged and the win is fewer buildings. Both modes carry the same working-power penalty — power is multiplied by 1.30 / 1.70 / 2.50 for Mk.I/II/III whenever a spray is actually doing something.
The practical consequence is that the two modes optimize different things. On a short chain the building saved by speedup is the bigger prize. On a long chain the compounding of extra-products dominates: each stage needs roughly 80% of the inputs it did before, and that discount multiplies down every level, which is why a deep tree like Universe Matrix collapses from 458 buildings with no spray to 177 with Mk.III extra-products, while Mk.III speedup pushes it the other way to 236. Deuterium is the exception the engine enforces: its collider and fractionation recipes do not accept extra-products, so the calculator grays that mode out on those steps and falls back to no bonus rather than quoting a number the game will not deliver.

DSP ratio and throughput cheat-sheet

Step (default building)One building makesNotes
Electromagnetic Matrix — Matrix Lab20 / min3 labs = 60/min; recipe is 1 magnetic coil + 1 circuit board in 3 s
Magnetic Coil — Assembling Machine Mk.III180 / min1 copper ingot + 2 magnet → 2 coil in 1 s; 225/min with Mk.III extra-products
Deuterium — Miniature Particle Collider120 / min10 hydrogen → 5 deuterium in 2.5 s; extra-products blocked
Deuterium — Fractionator3.6 / 7.2 / 18 per minPer fractionator on a full Mk.I / Mk.II / Mk.III hydrogen belt
Conveyor Belt Mk.I / II / III360 / 720 / 1800 per minSingle lane; the calc counts belts per step at your chosen tier
Proliferator Mk.I / II / IIIextra +12.5 / +20 / +25% outputSpeedup mode: ×1.25 / ×1.50 / ×2.00 rate; both cost +30 / +70 / +150% power

Worked plans, straight from the solver

60 Electromagnetic Matrix per minute — the default plan

Ask for 60 blue matrices per minute with no proliferator and the solver returns 9 buildings drawing 5.04 MW. The top of the tree is 3 Matrix Labs (20/min each, 100% utilization), fed by 1 Magnetic Coil assembler and 1 Circuit Board assembler, backed by 2 Magnet smelters plus an Iron Ingot and a Copper Ingot smelter. Raw feed: 120 iron-ore/min and 60 copper-ore/min. This is the ratio every DSP player solves first, and it is the screen the calculator loads by default.

Proliferator on that same line: none vs extra-products vs speedup

Keep the 60 Electromagnetic Matrix/min target and cycle the proliferator. No spray: 9 buildings, 5.0 MW, 120 iron-ore/min. Mk.III extra-products: 8 buildings, 11.7 MW, and iron-ore drops to 61.4/min — nearly halved — for 5.06 proliferator/min. Mk.III speedup: 7 buildings, 10.5 MW, iron-ore stays at 120/min, for 8.0 proliferator/min. The lesson in one line: extra-products slashes raw-material demand (about 50% less ore here) while speedup cuts the building count the most, and both pay the identical +150% power penalty. On this short a chain neither dominates; on a deep chain extra-products runs away with it.

60 Deuterium per minute — Fractionation vs Particle Collider

This is the single most valuable recipe swap in DSP. Route 60 deuterium/min through a Miniature Particle Collider and you get 9 buildings, 19.68 MW and 240 crude-oil/min (1 collider plus 8 Oil Refineries cracking hydrogen). Route the same 60/min through Fractionators instead and it is 8 buildings, 6.72 MW and 120 crude-oil/min (4 Fractionators on Mk.III belts plus 4 Oil Refineries). Fractionation uses half the crude oil and about a third of the power for the identical output — which is why the community treats the collider as a deuterium method of last resort until Dyson-sphere-scale power makes its speed and floor-space worth it.

30 Processor per minute — a mid-depth chain

Processors are where the tree starts to sprawl. Ask for 30/min and the solver returns 11 buildings at 6.84 MW, chaining Processor from Microcrystalline Component (×2) and Circuit Board, with Microcrystalline Component pulling High-Purity Silicon that is smelted from raw Silicon Ore. Raw feed: 240 silicon-ore/min, 90 copper-ore/min and 60 iron-ore/min. It is exactly the kind of shared-intermediate DAG that is miserable to solve by hand on the wiki and trivial to read here.

60 Universe Matrix per minute — the endgame wall

The white cube is every other matrix plus Antimatter, and it shows why a calculator stops being optional. With no proliferator, 60 Universe Matrix/min is 458 buildings and 407.88 MW — 15 Matrix Labs just on the final step, roughly 38 distinct sub-chains, and raw draws of 3915 crude-oil, 2460 coal, 1740 iron-ore, 1680 silicon-ore, 1080 titanium-ore and 960 copper-ore per minute. Now switch to Mk.III extra-products: the build drops to 177 buildings at 390.6 MW, because the material discount compounds through every one of those 38 steps. Mk.III speedup goes the other way — 236 buildings and 552.6 MW. On the deepest chain in the game, extra-products is not a preference, it is the answer.

Proliferator and ratio tips that save real resources

  • Extra-products compounds down long chains; speedup does not. On a short line the two are close, but on a deep tree the 80%-inputs-per-stage discount multiplies: Universe Matrix falls from 458 buildings with no spray to 177 with Mk.III extra-products, while speedup pushes it to 236. Reserve extra-products for the expensive top of the tree and the science cubes.
  • Both proliferator modes pay the same power tax: +30% / +70% / +150% working power for Mk.I / II / III. Extra-products spends that power to lower raw-ore demand; speedup spends it to shrink the building count. Decide which one you are actually short on — ore or space — and pick the mode to match.
  • Prefer fractionation over the Particle Collider for deuterium until you have power to burn. For 60 deuterium/min, fractionation uses 120 crude-oil/min and 6.72 MW versus the collider's 240 crude-oil/min and 19.68 MW — half the oil, roughly a third of the power. Switch the deuterium step's recipe in the row drawer to compare the two on your own target.
  • Fractionator output scales with belt tier, not with the assembler slider. Each fractionator makes about 3.6, 7.2 or 18 deuterium per minute on a full Mk.I, Mk.II or Mk.III hydrogen belt. Feed it stacked (piled) hydrogen on Mk.III belts to reach the top of that range, and loop the leftover hydrogen back so it keeps passing through.
  • Extra-products is blocked on some recipes — deuterium (both collider and fractionation) and other no-bonus recipes — and the calculator grays the mode out and falls back to no spray rather than inventing a number. If a step you expected to shrink did not, check whether it accepts extra-products at all.
  • Round up, never down. A fractional 8.3 assemblers means you build 9; 8 machines would try to run above 100% load, starve the next belt, and drag the whole chain below target. The fraction is shown so you can read utilization — 8.3 rounded to 9 is 92% utilization, which is a healthy build.
  • Mix modes per step for the best of both. The community rule is speedup on cheap low-tier smelting where space is tight and extra-products barely helps, extra-products on the costly high-tier steps. Set the global default, then override individual rows so a single plan runs both strategies where each pays off.
  • Expand "show the math" before you commit a ratio to a blueprint. It prints the recipe time, building speed, the proliferator multiplier and the final division for that step, so you can confirm why the count is what it is — and catch the moment a proliferator mode is silently doing nothing on a blocked recipe.

Dyson Sphere Program calculator — frequently asked questions

Is this Dyson Sphere Program calculator free?
Yes — no account, no login, nothing to install. It runs entirely in your browser, and every input is captured in the link so you can share an exact plan with a co-op partner.

Should I use proliferator extra-products or speedup?
Use extra-products (增产) when you want to conserve raw materials, especially on long chains — it raises output without touching inputs, so demand shrinks at every earlier step. Use speedup (加速) when buildings and floor space are the constraint and you have spare power, since it runs recipes faster for fewer machines. Both cost the same power penalty (+150% at Mk.III), so the choice comes down to whether you are short on ore or short on space.

Is deuterium fractionation better than the particle collider?
For most of the game, yes. For 60 deuterium/min the Fractionator route uses 120 crude-oil/min and 6.72 MW, while the Miniature Particle Collider route uses 240 crude-oil/min and 19.68 MW — fractionation wins on both oil and power. The collider earns its place late-game when Dyson-sphere power is free and you want its speed, smaller footprint, and its use in other recipes like Strange Matter.

How many Matrix Labs do I need for 60 Electromagnetic Matrix per minute?
Three. One Matrix Lab makes 20 Electromagnetic Matrix per minute (a 3-second recipe of 1 magnetic coil + 1 circuit board), so 60 / 20 = 3 labs at 100% utilization.

Does this calculator plan the Dyson sphere itself?
No — it plans component production, not orbital assembly. It tells you how many buildings, how much power and how much ore you need to make matrices, solar sails, small carrier rockets, frame materials and every other item. Placing nodes, frames, shells and launching sails into orbit is a separate in-game construction task the calculator does not simulate.

Why does it show a fractional number of buildings like 8.3?
8.3 is the exact number of machines that would hit your target rate at 100% utilization. You build 9, because you cannot place a third of an assembler. The fraction is kept on screen because it tells you how saturated the integer build is — 8.3 out of 9 is 92% utilization, which means the machines run 92% of the time.

Does extra-products mode increase input consumption?
No — that is the entire point of the mode. Extra-products raises output per craft while inputs stay identical, so you get more product from the same ore. Speedup is the mode that raises input consumption, because it runs the recipe faster.

Which recipes can't use extra-products?
Deuterium production (both the Particle Collider and Fractionator routes) and a handful of other no-bonus recipes reject extra-products. On those steps the calculator disables the mode and falls back to no spray, so your numbers match what the game actually produces rather than an impossible bonus.

Can I plan in items per second instead of per minute?
Yes. The rate unit toggles between per-minute and per-second, and the whole tree recomputes instantly. Per-minute is the DSP community default and the value the in-game statistics panel reports, so it is the safest unit to plan against.

How accurate are the numbers?
Recipe data comes from the open FactorioLab dataset (MIT license) at game version 0.10.29, and the solver's building, power and proliferator math is covered by an automated test suite. Every step exposes a show-the-math panel so you can verify any count against the recipe yourself.

What does the total power figure include, and how do I use it?
It is the sum of working power across every building in the plan, including the proliferator penalty on sprayed steps. Size your power generation to it with a margin, and treat a jump in that number as the true cost of a proliferator strategy: Mk.III extra-products roughly doubled the Electromagnetic Matrix line's draw from 5.0 to 11.7 MW even as it halved the ore, so budget the grid before committing the spray.

Glossary of Dyson Sphere Program production terms

Proliferator (增产剂)

A spray that coats items to boost the recipes they feed. It runs in one of two mutually exclusive modes — extra-products or production speedup — and always adds a working-power penalty of +30%, +70% or +150% for Mk.I, Mk.II and Mk.III.

Extra Products (增产)

Proliferator mode that raises output per craft by +12.5%, +20% or +25% (Mk.I/II/III) with inputs unchanged. Because it makes more product from the same ore, it lowers raw-resource demand at every earlier step and compounds down long chains.

Production Speedup (加速)

Proliferator mode that multiplies craft rate by 1.25, 1.50 or 2.00 (Mk.I/II/III). It consumes inputs proportionally faster, so raw draw is unchanged; the payoff is fewer buildings for the same output.

Assembler / Assembling Machine (制造台)

The general crafting building. Tiers Mk.I, Mk.II and Mk.III run at base speeds 0.75, 1.0 and 1.5; the calculator defaults to Mk.III. Faster tiers make more per building, so fewer are needed for a target rate.

Matrix Lab (矩阵研究站)

The building that crafts every science matrix (and also runs research). At base speed 1.0 it makes 20 Electromagnetic Matrix per minute, so three labs cover 60/min. Labs can be stacked vertically in-game.

Science Matrix (科学矩阵)

The research cubes — Electromagnetic (blue), Energy (red), Structure (yellow), Information (purple), Gravity (green) and Universe (white) — each built from the previous tiers. Universe Matrix combines all five plus Antimatter.

Fractionator (分馏塔)

A building that skims deuterium from a passing hydrogen belt at roughly a 1% base chance per pass. Output depends on belt tier — about 3.6, 7.2 or 18 deuterium per minute on a full Mk.I, Mk.II or Mk.III belt — and it uses far less power than the collider.

Miniature Particle Collider (微型粒子对撞机)

A high-power building that crafts deuterium from hydrogen (10 hydrogen to 5 deuterium in 2.5 s) and is also used for Strange Matter and antimatter. It makes 120 deuterium/min per building but draws heavy power; extra-products is blocked on its deuterium recipe.

Deuterium (重氢)

A heavy-hydrogen fuel used for Strange Matter, Deuteron Fuel Rods and antimatter. It can be produced two ways — Fractionator or Particle Collider — and choosing between them is one of the calculator's headline comparisons.

Conveyor Belt (传送带)

The logistics link between steps. Single-lane throughput is 360, 720 and 1800 items per minute for Mk.I, Mk.II and Mk.III. The calculator counts how many belts each step needs at your chosen tier, and belt tier also sets the Fractionator's deuterium rate.

Veins Utilization

A repeatable research that lowers the ore consumed per mining operation. Entered as a percentage, it reduces the raw-resource feed rates in the plan, letting you model a save file whose mining is already upgraded.

Utilization

The fractional building count divided by the rounded-up integer count. An 8.3 fractional rounded to 9 buildings is 92% utilization, meaning the machines run 92% of the time. Very low utilization is a hint to drop a building tier.

Sources & References

  1. DSP Wiki — the community reference for the recipe graph this planner solves: craft times, input and output counts, which building runs which recipe and at what speed multiplier, belt throughput per tier, and the proliferator numbers (extra products versus production speedup, and the fact that extra products only apply to recipes that allow them).
  2. Dyson Sphere Program on Steam (Youthcat Studio / Gamera Games) — the patch-notes feed used to date the dataset. The game is in Early Access and recipes have been retuned across updates, so the numbers here carry a version stamp instead of being presented as permanent.
  3. Dyson Sphere Program on Wikipedia — development and release history, and the studio behind it. Background rather than a numeric source.

Content verified by the Smart Calculators Team