What is the point of productivity modules?

[myridium]

What is the point of productivity modules? The bonus they give is so small, they don't work for end products, you can't put them in beacons, and the relative change in productivity is even smaller when you use them on productivity-boosted machines like the electromagnetic plant. (These start at 50% bonus productivity and the productivity modules add to that, so a 6% module gives 56%.)

I barely had use for productivity modules in the base game, but now in Space Age I don't know why they're in the game at all. What's the use case?

[Zanthra]

For Processing units using EM plants and Foundries, a single processing unit takes about 3.75 copper ore.

Adding 1 6% productivity module to each machine in the chain (Copper Ore -> Molten Copper -> Copper Wire -> Electronic Circuits -> Advanced Circuits -> Processing Units) reduces that to 3.19 ore. So you can make 17% more processing units for that ore.

Filling all the module slots, 5 per EM plant, and 4 per foundry is 1.902 ore per processing unit. That's about 97% more processing units for that ore.

Filling all slots with T3 modules, at 10% each, gives one processing unit per 1.281 copper ore, or 192% more processing units for the ore.

If you go crazy and fill all the slots with legendary T3 productivity modules (+25% productivity each), it's 0.189 copper ore per processing unit. That is +1886% more processing units for the same copper ore cost!

[MeduSalem]

Previously, as stated in the reply above, basically it was a way to reduce consumption of ingredients/ore. You got more for resources invested.



But if you rather want to make it a meta/philosophical debate whether it is still useful in 2.0, then I would argue:

No.


Simply because now we have so many ways to get infinite resources for everything that you stop feeling like you need to make the most out of what you have got.

Like on Vulcanus... infinite iron/copper/stone. Space platforms also give infinite amounts of other stuff. Gleba's whole production chain is based on infinite resource.

So in my opinion productivity modules are dead. I would not make many in future runs. Better invest the resources (or better said time effort) to make quality modules.


Maybe Holmium crafting chains on Fulgora can still profit from productivity; you get more out of all the scrap processing and it is not really renewable like the other resources.

I would mention Tungsten ore, but truth is, I actually don't have that much use for the stuff. If one secures a decent enough ore patch for it it will likely last for the entire campaign even if it is needed for the science pack production. ^^

Same for Uranium production chains. There it is even worse. Because honestly once you unlock fusion reactors you might as well just feed all the uranium to biters or even shoot asteroids with it. Who cares, absolutely superfluous resource after that point because it is not required for anything (I totally think it should be part of a science pack somehow, because it is ridiculous how useless it becomes).


The main offenders for consumption and why you had to expand so much and why productivity modules paid off... were definitely copper/iron, and those are now infinite with 0 pressure to expand for them. I even stopped to expand on Nauvis because all it is good for now is that in endgame it turns into a big biter-egg reserve.

[myridium]

For Processing units using EM plants and Foundries, a single processing unit takes about 3.75 copper ore.

Adding 1 6% productivity module to each machine in the chain (Copper Ore -> Molten Copper -> Copper Wire -> Electronic Circuits -> Advanced Circuits -> Processing Units) reduces that to 3.19 ore. So you can make 17% more processing units for that ore.

Filling all the module slots, 5 per EM plant, and 4 per foundry is 1.902 ore per processing unit. That's about 97% more processing units for that ore.

Filling all slots with T3 modules, at 10% each, gives one processing unit per 1.281 copper ore, or 192% more processing units for the ore.

If you go crazy and fill all the slots with legendary T3 productivity modules (+25% productivity each), it's 0.189 copper ore per processing unit. That is +1886% more processing units for the same copper ore cost!

That's not quite right though, because a 6% module only increases the productivity of an electromagnetic plant (or foundry I think) by 4% (150% --> 156% is a 4% increase in productivity).

Otherwise, I see what you mean. If you go crazy with them then you can get increased productivity. But the Lv.1 and Lv.2 modules seem pretty pointless...

Also since Space Age, resources are effectively infinite: mining productivity easier to research; legendary mining drills reducing resource drain massively; 46M scrap pile at Fulgora spawn location for me; lava on Vulcanus. I still don't see a compelling reason to use productivity modules. Resource availability is never the limitation, and this is what productivity modules are balanced for. They reduce speed of the machine and increase the energy consumption enormously, especially compared with the alternative modules you could put in instead (energy efficiency modules).

So in theory what you say sounds compelling (x10 resources) but does that actually matter? I can't see any situation where I would care to use productivity modules.

[Zanthra]

For Processing units using EM plants and Foundries, a single processing unit takes about 3.75 copper ore.

Adding 1 6% productivity module to each machine in the chain (Copper Ore -> Molten Copper -> Copper Wire -> Electronic Circuits -> Advanced Circuits -> Processing Units) reduces that to 3.19 ore. So you can make 17% more processing units for that ore.

Filling all the module slots, 5 per EM plant, and 4 per foundry is 1.902 ore per processing unit. That's about 97% more processing units for that ore.

Filling all slots with T3 modules, at 10% each, gives one processing unit per 1.281 copper ore, or 192% more processing units for the ore.

If you go crazy and fill all the slots with legendary T3 productivity modules (+25% productivity each), it's 0.189 copper ore per processing unit. That is +1886% more processing units for the same copper ore cost!

That's not quite right though, because a 6% module only increases the productivity of an electromagnetic plant (or foundry I think) by 4% (150% --> 156% is a 4% increase in productivity).

Otherwise, I see what you mean. If you go crazy with them then you can get increased productivity. But the Lv.1 and Lv.2 modules seem pretty pointless...

Also since Space Age, resources are effectively infinite: mining productivity easier to research; legendary mining drills reducing resource drain massively; 46M scrap pile at Fulgora spawn location for me; lava on Vulcanus. I still don't see a compelling reason to use productivity modules. Resource availability is never the limitation, and this is what productivity modules are balanced for. They reduce speed of the machine and increase the energy consumption enormously, especially compared with the alternative modules you could put in instead (energy efficiency modules).

So in theory what you say sounds compelling (x10 resources) but does that actually matter? I can't see any situation where I would care to use productivity modules.

I took the 150% into account at all stages when I did the math.

Productivity bonuses are multiplicative with speed bonuses, while the power consumption increase of the two are additive. Not as many belts, miners, resource trains, and other infrastructure need for the same number of goods.

Speed modules from beacons pass their -quality on to the buildings they affect, so you can't do speed beacon + quality.

You won't beat speed beacon + productivity on research pack production chains by relying on the increased durability from quality, especially when quality modules come with - speed too.

[myridium]

I took the 150% into account at all stages when I did the math.

Productivity bonuses are multiplicative with speed bonuses, while the power consumption increase of the two are additive. Not as many belts, miners, resource trains, and other infrastructure need for the same number of goods.

Speed modules from beacons pass their -quality on to the buildings they affect, so you can't do speed beacon + quality.

You won't beat speed beacon + productivity on research pack production chains by relying on the increased durability from quality, especially when quality modules come with - speed too.

So you use the productivity bonus essentially as another multplier to the crafting speed? I guess that works. And I suppose it does reduce the footprint of the factory.

Is there an effective way to use productivity modules with quality modules? Like for producing quality goods from normal quality ore, for example? Since resources are effectively infinite on the planets, I guess you want to maximise the throughput to get quality goods as quickly as possible. There must be some optimum balance between quality modules and productivity modules.

[Zanthra]

Production and quality both cannot go in beacons.

Without using speed beacons to compensate, productivity modules loose too much speed, especially considering you could just get more +quality in that module slot instead. If you want quality fast, just build big production.

Resources may be unlimited, but the number coming into your factory each second is. You can bring in more resources, or you could both make your factory do more with the resources coming in and bring in more resources.

The speed thing was in relation to "They reduce speed of the machine and increase the energy consumption enormously", this is only really a concern before beacons and nuclear respectively. With beacons you can compensate for the speed loss, and with enough +speed they start to be a net speed bonus. As for power, with nuclear you should not have any issues expanding if you are using nuclear or later fusion.

It's nearly a free bonus to put productivity in research pack production and the labs though, as that's 16% or 25% more research for free basically with a pair of T1 or T2 productivity modules in MK2 assemblers and basic labs, and double the research with mk3 modules, mk3 assemblers and biolabs (biolab drain reduction is multiplicative with productivity for another x2 research, so you really want to get your egg production anyways not just for productivity module 3).

You can do everything in the game just fine without putting any modules at all in any building. Productivity modules are certainly not overpowered, I think they are in a great place in terms of balance.

[MeduSalem]

You won't beat speed beacon + productivity on research pack production chains by relying on the increased durability from quality, especially when quality modules come with - speed too.

For the amount of science you get out of raw resources It gets pretty close though once you also unlocked Epic & Legendary qualities too. It is still somewhat less throughput than productivity, but as said, pretty close. ^^

But you will definitely have to place waaay more machines with quality to make up for the lack of speed per machine. And that can be a serious effort.

Is there an effective way to use productivity modules with quality modules? Like for producing quality goods from normal quality ore, for example? Since resources are effectively infinite on the planets, I guess you want to maximise the throughput to get quality goods as quickly as possible. There must be some optimum balance between quality modules and productivity modules.

Yea. You can place both together in machines. And I have seen some preliminary numbers done on that where supposedly after a certain % of quality ratio you could optionally also use productivity modules and achieve similar things because of how you eventually get a couple more items from the additional productivity that act like as if you had more quality. ^^

But the calculation for that gets pretty complex and while I thought about doing it before the 2.0 release, now that 2.0 is released I totally dread doing it because it seems annoying.

I have no doubts however that soon someone will put together some tables that give the most optimal module combinations to use for each tier/quality level of module and also depending on the machines (because there are vast differences there as well now with some having +50% base productivity and more slots). Maybe there even is already, and I am just not searching other places (like reddit) well enough.

Production and quality both cannot go in beacons.

Without using speed beacons to compensate, productivity modules loose too much speed, especially considering you could just get more +quality in that module slot instead. If you want quality fast, just build big production.

Yea, for the same reason beacons are funnily now in a spot where I also don't use them as much as I once used to before 2.0. That speed modules reduce quality kinda made a lot of the speed-module & beacon usage pointless as well. Which is kinda sad considering that they put so much effort into changing how beacons work, only for it not to be reasonable to use them in many situations once quality gets involved.

Resources may be unlimited, but the number coming into your factory each second is. You can bring in more resources, or you could both make your factory do more with the resources coming in and bring in more resources.

Well, the throughput to get resources into your factory is also kinda unlimited now. I mean, in the end the big volume transports used to be iron & copper ore and the plates. For those you needed tons of trains or many parallel belts.

But since you can effectively turn them into liquid metal form, or on vulcanus even get the stuff directly from lava, the transport bottleneck also feels less present than it used to be. In the end you can just put pipes everywhere to get the stuff to foundries (using direct insertion from them into assemblers) and not deal with rail/transport belts full of ore/plates at all. And you can do that for all other things like steel, iron sticks, gear wheels, copper cables, pipes, belts and even low density structures too. And it is actually more resource efficient to do that as well because of the high base productivity of foundries and because the recipes themselves are also more resource efficient than if you would do it in a furnace & assembler combination.

Even dedicated chip factories are not really my meta anymore because with the SA foundries & electromagnetic plants it is just easier to pump liquid metals into foundries and make the chips right where you need them and using direct insertion between machines instead of having a dedicated chip department and shipping a bazillion green & red chips.

Totally viable.

[Ranec1]

In 2.0 I only find productivity helpful at the tail ends of goods. For example, when I first make blue circuits I use them since I do not have a huge amount of the previous resources. However, they get swapped out with efficiency, speed or quality after a few hours when more is automated. Similar to labs when pulling those first few researches.

Also, I failed to realize that speed modules lower quality! Either, 1%, 1.5% or 2.5% based on module level. So one quality module is negated by speed modules of the same level.

[AileTheAlien]

What is the point of productivity modules? The bonus they give is so small, they don't work for end products, you can't put them in beacons, and the relative change in productivity is even smaller when you use them on productivity-boosted machines like the electromagnetic plant. (These start at 50% bonus productivity and the productivity modules add to that, so a 6% module gives 56%.)

I barely had use for productivity modules in the base game, but now in Space Age I don't know why they're in the game at all. What's the use case?

I always use productivity modules in my science, because labs have no pollution to multiply higher, so you have a reduced penalty from using them. Science uses up so many resources, that even only two normal quality productivity 1 modules is a big boost. (But I didn't make a spreadsheet. ) As you point out, the +50% machines are already very productive and there's also productivity research for mining, steel, and a few other specific recipes. So I think you'd still use them in any recipe that isn't made by those +50% machines, and doesn't have a research for productivity? Electric smelters? Those aren't very polluting and only use 186 W (483 W with two prod 3 modules). Plus, the productivity bonus is increased with quality of the modules, so I think that also helps? Sorry if this isn't a good enough answer!

EDIT:
I forgot that non-planet-specific science bottles themselves need to be made in normal assemblers. So if you put productivity into those assemblers, and efficiency into a few beacons, you'll come out ahead on pollution, electricity and productivity on those sciences. I think that would be +100% if you fill assembvler-3's with them. Double science!

[angramania]

But if you rather want to make it a meta/philosophical debate whether it is still useful in 2.0, then I would argue:
No.
Simply because now we have so many ways to get infinite resources for everything that you stop feeling like you need to make the most out of what you have got.

Like on Vulcanus... infinite iron/copper/stone. Space platforms also give infinite amounts of other stuff. Gleba's whole production chain is based on infinite resource.

So in my opinion productivity modules are dead.
...

Not dead but production+speed finally have alternative - quality+efficiency. Still very useful even on Vulcanus(only iron and copper are infinite, not other resources) and Gleba(infinity has its cost in evolution and polution). And instead of copper we now have another main constrain - holmium/lithium.

[Locane]

What is the point of productivity modules? The bonus they give is so small, they don't work for end products, you can't put them in beacons, and the relative change in productivity is even smaller when you use them on productivity-boosted machines like the electromagnetic plant. (These start at 50% bonus productivity and the productivity modules add to that, so a 6% module gives 56%.)

I barely had use for productivity modules in the base game, but now in Space Age I don't know why they're in the game at all. What's the use case?

You put them in your labs so you get the percentage bonus across all of the materials that went in to making the bottle.

[Qon]

With infinite time and space to build, infinite computation speed and RAM and infinite resources, productivity modules don't really matter.

But all you have is infinite resources and at some point if you want to go bigger you want to reduce the footprint of your factory and the UPS hit it takes to run it and the time it takes to build out all those factories and resource extractors.