Efficiency modules need a downside

[Frightning]

Pollution is a multiplicative effect which is applied after speed/consumption effects, if you apply a -30% pollution effect to a speeded up assembler the pollution reduction is quite potent. With this scheme if you are using alternating rows Prod3+Speed3 beacons where each assembler benefits from 8 beacons, and outfitted 2 of those 8 beacons with eff3 modules you'd basically halve the pollution while also reducing energy consumption by 1.3MW per beacon - this would be at the expense of not having speed3 modules in those 2 beacons so it wouldn't be a clear winning move, but it'd at least be a semi-viable option.

Pollution is determined by energy usage and pollution modifier. So Efficiency modules already have a pretty dramatic effect on pollution (especially if you are managing to get anywhere near -80% energy consumption mark), and while eff2 might not look much stronger than eff1 and likewise for eff3 and eff2, keep in mind that the extra -10% can greatly reduce pollution/unit. For example, using 2 eff1's in an Oil Refinery puts it an -60% energy consumption, which results in pollution of 1.44/sec, which w/ 1.0 crafting speed is 1.44 pollution/unit, upgrading to 2xeff2 cuts that pollution and energy usage in half, which means it just doubled the # of units per given amount of pollution (i.e. halved pollution per unit), that's a pretty big upgrade. For instance you can now produce twice as much oil products for the same energy and pollution impact w/ eff2s as you can w/ eff1s. This justifies their considerably higher cost about as well as the analogous benefits for higher tier prod and speed modules. If anything, lower tier modules in general are possibly too cheap compared to higher tiers (they provide modest benefits compared to higher tiers but do so extremely cheaply).

[BlakeMW]

The problem with that logic is comparative advantage. If electricity were a very limited resource and 95% of your factory costs went to power generation, then being able to produce twice as much oil per electricity would be awesome. And if pollution were a major limitation on production, say for example you die when exposed to high pollution, then being able to produce twice as much oil per unit of pollution would be awesome. But that's not the game we play. Electricity is fairly cheap and you have the choice of low upfront costs low ongoing costs for electricity generation, or high upfront costs zero ongoing costs.

Pollution can be quantified in terms of biters spawned vs the energy required to kill those biters, for example a medium biter spawns after 1000 pollution is generated, it will die to 4 unupgraded laser bolts which cost 2.4MJ (this is about as expensive as killing biters gets - there are much cheaper ways, including damage upgrades for laser turrets - the energy cost could be easily as low as 500kJ for upgraded regular ammo made with eff1 modules). So therefore each unit of pollution can be given an energy cost of 2.4kJ, which is really very generous, but I'm willing to err on the side of a generously large number due to the bother of setting up defenses.

Something like a pumpjack therefore has 90kW of direct energy usage, and without modules the defense will cost 2.4kJ * 9/s = 21.6kW.

Even on something like a pumpjack which is severely polluting, the energy savings from reducing pollution are minimal compared with the energy savings from reducing electricity use.

Now lets see what going from eff1 to eff2 does for us in oil processing:
10% of a chemical plant's pollution is 0.18 : the defense cost is 0.432kW
10% of a refinery's pollution is 0.36: the defense cost is 0.832kW

So the savings in terms of pollution from upgrading an eff1 module to an eff2 module is comparable to the idle drain of an inserter. Wow.

[dragontamer5788]

Without changing pricing, another scheme would be to make them more about pollution reduction:
lvl1: -20% Energy Consumption, -10% Pollution.
lvl2: -40% Energy Consumption, -20% Pollution.
lvl3: -80% Energy Consumption, -30% Pollution

Pollution is a multiplicative effect which is applied after speed/consumption effects, if you apply a -30% pollution effect to a speeded up assembler the pollution reduction is quite potent. With this scheme if you are using alternating rows Prod3+Speed3 beacons where each assembler benefits from 8 beacons, and outfitted 2 of those 8 beacons with eff3 modules you'd basically halve the pollution while also reducing energy consumption by 1.3MW per beacon - this would be at the expense of not having speed3 modules in those 2 beacons so it wouldn't be a clear winning move, but it'd at least be a semi-viable option.

I disagree. Remember that all math is additive.

By my calcs, a PM3x4 Assembly Machine 3 with 6 Speed3 Modules == 630% Energy and +300% pollution.

Two -80% Efficiency Beacons (if they existed) would drop that down to 470% Energy and +240% pollution. A reduction of only ~40% less pollution (yes, I took into effect the multiplicative effect), and a grand total of only 336kW saved.

Which isn't even a victory, because running two Beacons costs 960kW. I was serious about my -250% module before I'd consider using an Efficiency Module 3 in a Beacon. Beacons use up so much power that it literally never makes sense to use an Efficiency Module inside of a Beacon for power sake at current math.

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I think you're onto something with the "multiplicative" effect however. But both numbers need to be buffed severely. Efficiency Module 3 needs to be like 150% lower energy and -50% pollution each (and that'd still never save energy, but at least it'd be a sizable pollution reduction... which is meh. I got combat solved so why should I care about pollution?)

Continuing this hypothetical example of PM3x4 and 6-speed beacons, the math for adding two -150% Beacons (if they existed) would be 330% Energy and +200% Pollution for a ~65% reduction of pollution. Energy saved is only 630kW so you haven't made up the 960kW idle drain of the beacons yet... even at 150%.

And if energy options get easier in 0.14 (ie: addition of nuclear power or something similar...) then Efficiency just really won't make sense. Even at these buffed levels.