The best calculator to use in Dyson Sphere Program

best dyson sphere program calculator ratios
(Image credit: Youthcat Studio)

Looking for the best calculator for Dyson Sphere Program? Like other factory management games such as Factorio and Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere Program’s resources are all produced at varying rates and quantities. 

Getting the most out of your factory means understanding what those rates and quantities are, so that you can plan the layout of your factory to maximise efficiency. A calculator can be of significant assistance in working out relevant Dyson Sphere Program ratios, so this quickfire guide will briefly explain how they work, and the best calculator to use.

Dyson Sphere Program calculator: Do you need one?

Not at all. You can play without ever touching a calculator and still have a great time. But not only will having some understanding of DSP’s resource production rates and quantities help make your factory more efficient, it will also make your life easier in the long run. Many resources have long and involved production lines, and you don’t want to have to make a new line for, say, Electromagnetic Turbines, every time you need them. 

A calculator can help you work out how many resources you can feed from one assembly line into others. This can help you plan out the layout of your factory to be more compact, more efficient, and easier to build.

How do they work?

A calculator essentially works by giving you a comprehensive breakdown of everything you need to create a particular item, from digging your raw materials out of the ground to the final press of the last assembler in your production line.

To use a calculator, select the items you want to produce, alongside the quantity in which you want to produce it, (you can usually specify between different rates, such as per-second or per-minute). The calculator will then provide a breakdown of what’s required to make the amount of that item in the time you’ve specified. The calculator may use different visualisations of this, such as in a list or a flow chart, so select the one that is most intuitive to you.

(Image credit: Youthcat Studio)

The best Dyson Sphere Program calculators

As Dyson Sphere Program is a new game, many of the calculators available at time of writing are still in development. But here's what we have so far:

The most complete calculator around is the FactorioLab Calculator for Dyson Sphere Program. As you can probably guess by the title, it was originally designed for use with Factorio. This calculator uses the same interface, but for calculating DSP’s many item recipes instead.

The tried and tested format of FactorioLab’s calculator gives it an immediate edge. The interface is clean, responsive, and highly customisable. You can visualise the data in a list or flow chart, specify different recipes for making the same item, and more.

Alternatively, you can use the Dyson Sphere Program Wiki Calculator, which arguably has a nicer interface than FactorioLab. However, it is less complete, lacking information on some key items, while also suffering from various bugs. It’s also less dynamic than the FactorioLab calculator, offering less opportunities to tinker with settings to get the exact production approach you desire.

There are a couple of other Dyson Sphere Program calculators, such as dyson-calculator.com, but these are still very much in development.

Contributor

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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