Are efficiency modules even worth it?

[Shaymes]

of yourse prod modules have there rights to be in the game simple Experiment steal funance vs electric furnancs with and without prod modules

if you interst 1 Piece of coal into a steal furnance you get ~5 stealplates, but if you a 1 Piece of coal into a Boiler and run only 1 electri frunance ou get ~2,3 steal plates
but if you have 2xlvl2 modules (-80% power consume) and you put 1 Piece of coal into the Boiler again the electric furnance you get 11 steal plates

so infact the energyconsume effect fuel value to reduce powerconsume reduce fuel consume

[JonathanMorgan]

Here's how I look at efficiency modules and solar panels:
1. Efficiency modules don't take up any additional space, solar panels do. This is a key point if you don't have much space, like playing on a map with very tough biter settings and a small starting area.

I have played with max biter settings (before version 0.15 came out) and efficiency modules not only kept my energy consumption down (which means less power generating structures) they also reduce pollution (which means weaker biter attacks and maybe even fewer or no biter attacks). This was important to me because I set my starting area to a normal size if I remember correctly and did not have much room. Early game expansion was very hard even with the armor piecing bullets. There would be so many small biters that they were spawning faster than I could kill them. I would have to drop a grenade on myself every now and then just to be able to keep moving, lol (would have the 2nd type armor).

2. I liked using both efficiency and solar panels to reduce pollution to slow down the attacks and evolution speed with hard biter settings.
3. If I don't have hard biter settings (like rail world setting in version 0.15) I would rather get the benefit of the productivity modules than efficiency modules. I still like using solar panels though because it is free energy after they are built.
4. I would possibly switch to productivity modules though even with toughest biter settings if I claimed enough land.

Before infinite research technologies were introduced in 0.15, I had no real incentive to build a huge base. Now since 0.15 has come out and understanding the benefit of productivity modules better, I would probably always do point 4 above.

- Jonathan

[Ph0t0n]

The thing I'm most curious about... Say you have 5 green circuit assemblers with productivity modules and beacons filling a blue belt. It will use about way more electricity and pollute much more than 20 green circuit assemblers with efficiency modules filling a blue belt. However, the setup with productivity modules will take 40% less resources... Which means 40 percent less miners and 40 percent less electric ovens! Hence... 40 percent less pollution and energy use. I don't know how to calculate the number of miners and ovens that would be saved... Perhaps I'll setup a test sometime. It would be interesting to compare the electric and pollution numbers of the two setups after accounting for differences in oven and miner requirements

[Koub]

This is a 2.5 year old topic, there has been other topics with all the math you can eat on the subject since then.
Eff modules are just good to lower your pollution in order to trigger as few alien attacks and pollution induced evolution factor as possible.

[Hannu]

The only situation I can imagine mk 3 eff modules to be useful are miners in combination with speed beacons to keep pollution down to 20%. However, this is supersuperlategame when this starts to make sense..

There is no reason to care about pollution at very late game. In my opinion it is more interesting when swarms of biters attack all the times and I have to make sure that ammo production (I prefer gun turrets) and supply trains run continuously. When you have two infinite research tiers biters are no real threat. If you want to make as productive megabase as possible then it is good idea to disable pollution and biters. The only way they affect very late game is UPS drop.

There is not much use for efficiency modules with normal game settings. You can delay updating of powerplant or spreading of pollution cloud temporarily by applying cheap efficiency 1 modules at midgame for example to buy time for building of defense walls or some production line. But is is not necessary or even significant benefit. But I have understood that efficiency modules may be very essential with special game settings, like deathworld. Then you have to really control pollution at midgame.

[Oktokolo]

Lategame, i found efficiency modules still nice to have at mining outposts near the front lines.
But when you first get efficiency modules and start spamming them into everything, they are the overpowered pollution cloud shrinker that makes you almost forget that biters even exist.

[Koub]

There is no reason to care about pollution at very late game.

Depending on the map settings (high biter settings + marathon-ish costs settings), fighting biters can cost you a significant enough portion of your resources to compel lower your pollution cloud as much as possible in order to free some of these resources for science.

[Hannu]

Depending on the map settings (high biter settings + marathon-ish costs settings), fighting biters can cost you a significant enough portion of your resources to compel lower your pollution cloud as much as possible in order to free some of these resources for science.

OK. I have never seen anyone playing very late game with those settings. It may be quite grindy experience.

[Hannu]

Lategame, i found efficiency modules still nice to have at mining outposts near the front lines.

Sure if you want to reduce attacks. However, I appreciate Bob's pollution increasing modules at outposts near borders. They give more action.

But when you first get efficiency modules and start spamming them into everything, they are the overpowered pollution cloud shrinker that makes you almost forget that biters even exist.

This is true, efficiency module 1s are very cheap and effective. Certainly worth using if player need to think pollution.