I think it is possible to optimize faraway parts of a factory because this has been done for a similarly interconnected simulation already. The Hashlife algorithm can compute Conway's Game of Life far into the future very quickly. It has no benefit whatsoever for simulating one step, but it can perf...

I'm saying this because i'm not sure it's possible to fit 12 beacon per mining drill using train wagon direct insertion, following your math reasonning, if we were to use less beacon, say only up to +4 speed then the solving would be when ( 5+1.5)* r = ( 5-0.45 ) * ( r + 0.3) with a result of aroun...

An interesting corollary of my previous post is that prod modules are better for speed than speed modules when beacons give a speed bonus of 6 or more. For non-mining recipes, that is. This explains why serious builds put them everywhere. One could say that they should be nerfed.

I'm surprised that no one in this thread compared putting speed modules in miners vs productivity modules. The following calculations are assuming that miners are moved to a new patch when the old one depletes. This does ignore the benefit that the patches last longer with prod modules but that is p...

I think the best benchmark would be headless Factorio on Linux with no GUI and all unnecessary processes turned off. For example Arch linux or Ubuntu server is pretty close to that out of the box.