Factorio Forums

Hi

Looking at assemblers it appears that grey assemblers are the best.

Grey:
speed 0.5
kw 75

Blue:
speed 0.75
kw 150

Yellow:
speed 1.25
kw 375


2 Grey:
speed 1
kw 150

3 Grey:
speed 1.5
kw 225


As it is for the ressources, every assembler takes the previous tier so they are always more expensive.

As you can see 2 grey are faster and cheaper then one blue for the same power cost
3 Grey are faster and cheaper than one yellow and use less power.


so yellow assembler are completly unnecessary since

2 Blue :
speed 1.5
300kw

The only difference between gray and the rest is that grey do not allow fluids and since space doesn't matter in factorio this means with the current state of the game yellow assembler are kinda useless and blue are only needed when you deal with fuilds

Higher tier assemblers produce less pollution and support modules. At the cost of increased power consumption and build cost.
Works as intended.

How did you get those kw numbers? That's not what the wiki says--- uh oh.

Space *does* matter in Factorio :
- having to clear biters
- beacon ranges
- more belts needed
- plain different designs if you mix T1 and T2+ assemblers (for fluids/modules)...

Nefrums wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 02, 2019 10:50 am

Higher tier assemblers produce less pollution and support modules. At the cost of increased power consumption and build cost.
Works as intended.

Yeah, assuming the wiki is right,
2 Ass2 : 1.5 crafting speed, 4.8 PU/s, 310kW (+4.77 PU/s from boiler for 9.57 PU/s total*)
3 Ass1 : 1.5 crafting speed, 9 PU/s, 279kW (+4.29 PU/s from boiler for 13.3 PU/s total*)

*not counting the inserter energy consumption, and power used / pollution from extracting the coal in the first place...

Assembler 3 has always been an endgame item. They take 4 modules, which makes modules worthwhile even without beacons. 3 PM3 + 1 SM1 is great for example. Saves you 30% input materials and only lowers the output by 5%. Or use a SM3 to increase overall speed, meaning you need less machines (and less modules!)

This "space is endless" thing is just nonsense. There are space constraints because of water for example. Even with a completely flat map, some builds get huge. 180 AM1 for a yellow belt of red circuits (and another 30 for copper cables). 120 AM2 for the same. Or 72 AM3

You can easily use lower tier assemblers for low volume stuff. But if you need large volumes of things with high crafting times, the high tier assemblers are very attractive. It's a choice

ef_ex wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 02, 2019 10:47 am

Looking at assemblers it appears that grey assemblers are the best.

Building actual factories to do actual work with them, it gradually becomes clear that reading the stats and doing the maths are no substitute for actual experience.

This is what college students learn when they graduate and get jobs. Sure, you have a degree and the guy training you doesn't - but you don't know squat, and your degree doesn't actually mean anything. Remember when you got to college, and nobody cared about your high school GPA or the legendary permanent record? Same thing.

Energy is cheap. Don't worry about the cost of energy because you'll sooner get killed by a lack of iron ore, not a lack of coal.

Also, don't try getting cute with mixing assemblers. It's a lot of effort for extremely questionable gain. Pick the best one you can afford and use it exclusively.

It's about modules. If you care about power, use Assembler 3 with 1x Speed 3 and 3x Efficiency 3. Result :
1.25*1.5 = 1.875 speed
375KW * (1+0.7-3*0.5 = 0.2) = 75KW power
Almost 4 times more speed with same power consumption as Assembler 1.

Modules, recipe types (fluid handleing) and size.
By the time you want to use blue assemblers, you are rich enough to afford them and consider the price reasonable. Or, you need to handle liquids, in which case greys just don't work.

If you want, you can absolutely use grey assemblers for everything they support. This will take up more space.

Modules only work on blue and yellow assemblers.

But my favorate one. Blue and yellow assemblers are quick, easy upgrades for an existing setup, with minimal downsides. You just replace greys with blues and blues with yellows. And upgrade the belts.

Heck, belts are the same way.

its like 3 iron for 2 yellow belts, and 11.5 iron for 1 red belt. And blue belts require 31.5 iron plus an extra 20 lubricant. But people still use blue belts. Why? Because it is easy to upgrade without redesign, and the speed is a big deal and apperently worth a 15x premium for 3x performance.

Worse in some ways, better in others.

leadraven wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:16 pm

If you care about power, use Assembler 3 with 1x Speed 3 and 3x Efficiency 3

You can only lower energy consumption to 20%. That's achievable with 3 of the far cheaper Efficiency 1s. Or 2 Efficiency 2

Serenity wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:46 pm

leadraven wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:16 pm

If you care about power, use Assembler 3 with 1x Speed 3 and 3x Efficiency 3

You can only lower energy consumption to 20%. That's achievable with 3 of the far cheaper Efficiency 1s. Or 2 Efficiency 2

It's not if you have a speed 3 module in there, which increases energy consumption by 70%; you need 3x Efficiency 3 to get it back down to 20% energy consumption (170 - 3*50 = 20).

If your goal is to save resources, Efficiency3 is probably the last item you ever want to use. Just make a million solar panels at that point.

your balancing problem doesn't include many variables ... and first of, modules as said before.

For example all my science pack are produced by lvl 3 assemblers with 4 productivity modules, so I can have up to 40% science pack. Combined with item needed with productivity modules and research labs with 20% productivity, it adds around 100% productivity on complicated pack like yellow, purple or blue.

Try to do that with lvl 1 assemblers.

BlueTemplar wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 02, 2019 11:37 am

Space *does* matter in Factorio :
- having to clear biters
- beacon ranges
- more belts needed
- plain different designs if you mix T1 and T2+ assemblers (for fluids/modules)...

- chunk calculation and autosave time, (which is neccessary, but annoying), so basicly alot of data.
- if you like paved factories, you need like 3x times more stone

I´m sure there are lots of other reasons why space DOES matter.

A tighter base also makes logistic bots work faster and gives trains less travel time.

I don't think that holds up with -80% energy consumption from efficiency modules.

torne wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 7:07 pm

Serenity wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:46 pm

leadraven wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:16 pm

If you care about power, use Assembler 3 with 1x Speed 3 and 3x Efficiency 3

You can only lower energy consumption to 20%. That's achievable with 3 of the far cheaper Efficiency 1s. Or 2 Efficiency 2

It's not if you have a speed 3 module in there, which increases energy consumption by 70%; you need 3x Efficiency 3 to get it back down to 20% energy consumption (170 - 3*50 = 20).

Yes, but you're missing out on a 50% speed increase compared to the (admittedly far more expensive) 1xSpd3+3xEff3 setup, which because of that speed increase produces items at an effective energy (and pollution) cost of 13.(3)% of an unmoduled T3 assembler v. 20% of the 3xEff1 setup.

I'm adding this thread to my collection of threads that prove that burner inserters that have never played the game should be banned from posting in the balancing board.

If you have questions of why people use something, there's a board for newbies where they can do just that. Don't come here spamming this board with your irrelevant "calculations".