Re: why prod modules are important
Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2022 2:47 pm
sadly perfectly understandable
Fully agreed.mmmPI wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 5:42 amIt was also said many things that were not correct on this thread.
For example, prod3 modules do not repay for themselves in under one or 2 hours. but 10 hours if you place 3 of them in the mining drilll, or 7 hours or so, if you build a design with beacon and prod3 modules which is not advisable, if you want your ore patch to last longer, do not use beacon, if you want more throughput or UPS, use speed module in the mining drill or efficiency.
The main relation between UPS and mining drill is that the less number of mining drill, the less UPS are consumed, it has nothing to do with moving an ore patch more frequently this is not UPS-related, the potential slow down because you send thousand of bots to replace mining drill in an other configuration on an ore patch is not what people care about in UPS-related discussion but rather the build itself, and how it perfoms overtime WITHOUT human intervention.
It is CLEARLY cheaper to build 9 or 10 rockets than building 3000 modules let alone 50 000 as it was wrongfully claimed.
It is always better to place a prod module 3 anywhere than in a mining drill. Only place your prod module 3 starting by the silo and place them from the end of the chain to the beginning of the chain.
That mean It makes no sense to pay for 3 prod3 per miner, if you are still using steel or stone furnace for example. The better choice is to improve your furnaces and put prod3 module in them.
The mining productivty research is extremly strong as 1 mining drill cost almost nothing and apart from DEATH WORLD MARATHON, most of time for most player that play default vanilla settings it will be easier and cheaper to just build new mining drill rather than prod3 modules for the existing one, if you can still use a tank to fight a against biters, that mean with personnal laser defense and nukes it will be very easy to add new mining drill and ore path.
If not, because playing on island or with very angry biters, then as aka13 said, the focus changes, and instead of ressource efficiency, or speed, the main concern become to not invest human time for small or no result against a wave of ennemy. Therefore adding prod3 module in an ore patch allowing for maintaing a certain throughput for a longer period of time is interesting. It allows to increase the reward from any (difficult) expansion.
Those last point are important to consider because otherwise if you math out ressource efficiency, then a mining drill is cheaper than a module ,and it produces more extra "free ressources" faster thanks to the productivity bonus research. In no way it is worth it in terms of ressources from the game to build prod3 module for every miner, it is only when factoring in the requirement for constant human intervention for more ore patch in biter territory that then need to be defended that prod3 module are choosen.
There was a lot of discussion on prod3 in mining drill, but it's the worst place for them to go, again don't be fooled and PLACE THEM EVERYWHERE ELSE FIRST. Then build new miners instead, its cheaper and gives you more free ore faster thanks to the research, if you can't because island or angry biters, making it last forever; only then consider prod module 3 in your mining drill. And i guess you wouldn't want to beacon them then
I would like to point out that in my previous comment the 10 hours required for a productivity module 3 to pay out for itself in a mining drill is not a scenario that you will only encounter in late game in practice because it was calculated with a cost for 1 module lvl3 of a 1000 ores, which require already having productivity module 3 at every step of the production chain, if you were to build productivity module lvl 3 and place them first in your mining drill, it would take more than 40 hours for a productivity module 3 to pay for itself, which i'm not sure an island scenario would last depending on the size of the island and the ressources it contain.
Not having the option of doing space science before you have the rocket silo and sattelite the modules do make a viable fallback. And you can always place them in assemblers and furnaces later on when you expand post rocket. But I think in DW you have to balance that against artillery. I think prioritizing that benefits you more as it will clear out biter nests around your base, reduce the attack rate you constantly face and the evolution speed because less pollution reaches the biter nests further away. Plus you make ore fields accessible easier.jodokus31 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 11:38 amFully agreed.
When I said, first your max out your factory towards UPS and then put modules in miners everywhere, it didn't factor in the DW Marathon or Island seed scenarios, also I neglected the UPS loss, from putting modules in miners. Practice is always a bit different than theory, i guess. It seems, that in DW and island scenarios its better to put modules in miners rather early, if your factory is still small and you want to squeeze out as much as possible.
If I wanted to create a huge megabase for potential unlimited runtime, I wouldn't go for DW or Island and at some point, I would rather replace mining patches with creative mod chests. It's probably interesting how far you get with it, though. But, there's also the possibility to remove all biters per command or I also remember times, when people moved their whole factory several thousand tiles from the center to get better patches.
No, it is better to invest ressources toward the ealier mining prod tech and then toward silo or not consume them.
Disclaimer: I'm talking about a huge megabases, which surely gets better UPS-wise, if you omit the mining and even the smelting part. I wouldn't do such a thing, because it's not in my interest.mrvn wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 12:52 pmI'm not sure you get any further with creative mod chests than with miners. Given enough mining research a single miner + blue splitter fills a blue belt. Is a creative mod chest + blue loader any more UPS friendly? Past that you would have to go to logistic bots or a chest with 2-3 loaders to use more mining research.
I also wonder when a miner actually consumes CPU time. Does the game spend any noticeable time on miners in between outputting ore? Isn't the miner asleep between ore outputs? Or in other words: Does a slower miner consume less CPU?
I guess it depends on the goal and on the size of the island. Modules need to pay off until you get benefit and you must have enough resources on the island all together to have any benefit from modules. Maybe mk1 or mk2 prodmodules are more beneficial, as they pay off earlier (with less future benefit, though)mmmPI wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 1:30 pmNo, it is better to invest ressources toward the ealier mining prod tech and then toward silo or not consume them.
Making too many useless module is actually one of the failing condition for island world if you do not have enough raw ore available for modules to pay for themselves which is made worse if you start making a lot of them before the silo.
It also depend on the amount of time you are willing to waste, you could just build 4 prod3 module, and put them in the only machine allowed to function at a time. Only requiring 4 modules for launching a rocket while getting the full productivity wherever you can.jodokus31 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 2:17 pmI guess it depends on the goal and on the size of the island. Modules need to pay off until you get benefit and you must have enough resources on the island all together to have any benefit from modules. Maybe mk1 or mk2 prodmodules are more beneficial, as they pay off earlier (with less future benefit, though)No, it is better to invest ressources toward the ealier mining prod tech and then toward silo or not consume them.
Making too many useless module is actually one of the failing condition for island world if you do not have enough raw ore available for modules to pay for themselves which is made worse if you start making a lot of them before the silo.
Well, you could just direct insert the science packs. That would get you the most science / minute. The more you eliminate the more you save UPS. I was thinking you would just replace the miner with a chest and fill a belt from it and leave everything else the same.jodokus31 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 1:45 pmDisclaimer: I'm talking about a huge megabases, which surely gets better UPS-wise, if you omit the mining and even the smelting part. I wouldn't do such a thing, because it's not in my interest.mrvn wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 12:52 pmI'm not sure you get any further with creative mod chests than with miners. Given enough mining research a single miner + blue splitter fills a blue belt. Is a creative mod chest + blue loader any more UPS friendly? Past that you would have to go to logistic bots or a chest with 2-3 loaders to use more mining research.
I also wonder when a miner actually consumes CPU time. Does the game spend any noticeable time on miners in between outputting ore? Isn't the miner asleep between ore outputs? Or in other words: Does a slower miner consume less CPU?
But, creative chest to fill 1-4 lanes should be better UPS wise. than a field of miners. Maybe, if one miner can a fill a lane or a train wagon, it's getting different...
Additionally, without the need to transport them from mining field to smelters via belt/train. Or smelting on-side and transport to factory is similar.
Also, you could also omit the smelting, bc. its also not very interesting either and consumes only UPS.
Everything after that I'd consider as interesting enough, which deserves not be mocked by creative mode.
Done that, blocked on building the next science color. So I'm stuck somewhere in between where I can do modules, level 1 modules are after all just red/green science, but not rocket research.jodokus31 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 2:17 pmI guess it depends on the goal and on the size of the island. Modules need to pay off until you get benefit and you must have enough resources on the island all together to have any benefit from modules. Maybe mk1 or mk2 prodmodules are more beneficial, as they pay off earlier (with less future benefit, though)mmmPI wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 1:30 pmNo, it is better to invest ressources toward the ealier mining prod tech and then toward silo or not consume them.
Making too many useless module is actually one of the failing condition for island world if you do not have enough raw ore available for modules to pay for themselves which is made worse if you start making a lot of them before the silo.
I do see speed runners put modules in other stuff too, at least temporary. E.g. when they have the modules before the silo is done putting them in the science labs is a great place to store them.jodokus31 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 2:17 pmI guess it depends on the goal and on the size of the island. Modules need to pay off until you get benefit and you must have enough resources on the island all together to have any benefit from modules. Maybe mk1 or mk2 prodmodules are more beneficial, as they pay off earlier (with less future benefit, though)
If you only want to launch one rocket on normal settings, there's not much, which really deserves prodmodules.
I take a vanilla speedrun as inspiration for that, which has prod3's only in rocket silo and otherwise a huge bunch of prod1's in several expensive locations (labs, etc.). But then, speedrun is not necessarily optimized for little resource usage. But it doesn't waste too much resources into useless modules in order to get the rocket launched, because that would lose time. (However, you could produce prod1's and feed them later to the necessary productivity science. This is slower, but more resource efficient.)
mrvn wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 6:59 pm
Well, you could just direct insert the science packs. That would get you the most science / minute. The more you eliminate the more you save UPS. I was thinking you would just replace the miner with a chest and fill a belt from it and leave everything else the same.
Because then you are comparing apples with oranges. Your UPS gain is probably just the saved belts and inserters.mmmPI wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 7:21 pmmrvn wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 6:59 pm
Well, you could just direct insert the science packs. That would get you the most science / minute. The more you eliminate the more you save UPS. I was thinking you would just replace the miner with a chest and fill a belt from it and leave everything else the same.
But why ?, if you are going to use infinity chest to replace the miner, you will just put it near your train station and load the ore on train directly from the chest no need to put it on a belt. or you just output a belt near the furnaces and you save on the train design but then you can't say you keep everything the same, i understand jokodus31
Yeah not PM3 x) , and don't build beacon right otherwise you will reduce the time available to find new ore patch, AND you will have to take some of that fewer time to reshuffle the miner to get the last bits of ore that beacon prevented. terrible idea.
I wanted to anticipate this line of thought with my last sentence.mrvn wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 6:59 pmWell, you could just direct insert the science packs. That would get you the most science / minute. The more you eliminate the more you save UPS. I was thinking you would just replace the miner with a chest and fill a belt from it and leave everything else the same.
If you are limited to starting area resources, I would focus on the ability to break out and get more mining. I don't know, if prod1s are a good idea, but you slow down yourself to get them instead of tech, combat items or infrastructure to make new mining fields accessible. Maybe it's worth, cause you have more resources for those things later. But, some prod1's which can be dumped into purple science a lot later, don't prevent biters from destroying your base