>>718037493
I can't blame them, none of it is really hard to make, but it has a lot of steps that don't come naturally.
The big first step is that you have to expand beyond the starting zone to go find oil. Not only do you have to research a new mining device, you have to expand your logistic chain far beyond your main base. This means more than likely you have to start using trains, although a long line of pipes and electric poles works too.
Oil then has to be processed into petrol which is an entirely different type of input that doesn't go on a belt. That's another section of the factory that has to be built to get intermediate products to use in machines, linking the oil refinery to chemical plants along with coal to get plastic to feed back into your factory. It's effectively another basic resource that has to be routed after producing it.
The final part about blue science though is the ratio of assemblers is much higher than red and green science. You need one intermediate machine (Iron Gear Assembler) and five science assemblers for red science. You need at minimum five intermediate assemblers (Copper Wire, Green Circuit, Iron Gear, Inserter, Transport Belt) for six green science assemblers.
To produce blue science at the same rate, you need 24 assemblers to produce 2 engines, plus another six chemical plants and 36 assemblers to produce three red circuits, and mercifully only one extra chemical plant to produce sulfur. That's going from a simple iron and copper input with 17 total assemblers for both red and green science to 60 assemblers, seven chemical plants, and an entirely new refinery setup to produce blue science.
It's too late to change it now, but I think blue science should've just used one battery and something else directly from a chemical plant. It's too big of a jump without having a step that immediately rewards you for getting up oil production, or perhaps military science should've incorporated oil into itself.
