Are efficiency modules even worth it?

[Artman40]

How well do efficiency modules fare compared with raw materials needed to make them vs raw materials needed to make various electricity production structures (with approximately the same power save vs electricity generated ratio)?

[quinor]

Poorly. They are mainly there to reduce the polution.

[Avezo]

Didn't do math for that but I think with efficiency modules you can do coal liquification to solid fuel and get more energy as an output than coal does.

[Tev]

Eff1 +- match solar panels in terms of electricity AND reduce pollution. So use them everywhere where you don't use prod/spd.

Eff2/3 are not worth it imo.

[Serenity]

Level 1 modules aren't too bad in resource cost. Given how easy energy is to get either through robot-built solar fields or now nuclear, efficiency usually isn't worth it to save energy. But I like Efficiency 1 in some distant mining outposts that are close to biter bases, so it doesn't agitate biters as much and/or increase their evolution.

[quyxkh]

Except for pumpjacks, anything speed can do, efficiency and replication can do better.

[DaveMcW]

Efficiency 1 is slightly cheaper than solar panels.

Efficiency 2 and 3 are useless.

[Matthias_Wlkp]

I trying to build small bases and I would say Efficiency modules help a lot to save on space and minimize power usage. I try to avoid Solar power, as it's too space consuming and looks ugly.

[Killcreek2]

I generally use 3x eff 1 for miners, [& in early game the chem plants & furnaces too], to reduce the pollution cloud and take some pressure off the steam engines.

If you are aggro-ing less biter attacks, you need less bullets / electricity / oil produced to feed your turrets. This is kinda a hidden situational bonus with efficiency modules though [less helpful in dense forests, but actually pretty useful in deserts].

Putting 3x eff3 + 1 speed3 in a L3 assembler = 80% power / pollution reduction plus a 50% craft speed boost. Costly to setup, but can be worth it to minimise pollution in the long run.

[Blurb]

Didn't do math for that but I think with efficiency modules you can do coal liquification to solid fuel and get more energy as an output than coal does.

For these kinds of questions, productivity modules are always the better choice.
This should be painfully obvious after even a quick glance at the numbers involved (several MJ worth of fuel vs some hundred kJ of power).

[Ingolifs]

I use efficiency 2 in blue assemblers for all the things I don't make much of. Beyond that, I hardly ever use them. I don't even make efficiency 3.

[Nasabot]

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..

[Aeternus]

Tier 3 modules only make sense late game anyway.
I do have a good use for the mk2 modules: Pushing 2 into an electric smelter caps out it's pollution and energy consumption reduction. This is handy when you want to do smelting at mining outposts (ore stacks 50 for trains, smelted iron/copper stacks 100, reduces traffic on your rail grid). If you have a lot of pumpjacks at a distant outpost and want to keep pollution to a minimum, efficiency 2 modules also help.
Efficiency 1 modules are very useful early on, before you have nuclear power - keeps you from having to build a ginormous solar or chemical plant.

[OdinYggd]

2 efficiency2 modules reduce things to 20% power consumption- the minimum allowed.

This also reduces their pollution by a comparable amount.

I run either efficiency or speed in pretty much everything, and actually question how useful productivity modules are. The world files are what 1million x 1 million? That's a lotta ore. And even if you spammed solar power, you still have a finite amount of electricity at any given time. Best to make the most of it.

[Aeternus]

2 efficiency2 modules reduce things to 20% power consumption- the minimum allowed.
This also reduces their pollution by a comparable amount.
I run either efficiency or speed in pretty much everything, and actually question how useful productivity modules are. The world files are what 1million x 1 million? That's a lotta ore. And even if you spammed solar power, you still have a finite amount of electricity at any given time. Best to make the most of it.

Actually, with solar power you have a near infinite amount of electricity, and nuclear tends to tip those scales even further. Productivity allows you to get more stuff from the same amount of ore - the drawbacks are power usage increase (easy to resolve unless you run pure chemical) and speed decrease (can be handled by just building more production units). I find Speed Modules to be useful only in beacons and places where Production can't be used, but rarely use them. I'd rather have 4 Assemblers shelling out 140% output for the same resource input, then 1 Assembler with speed shelling out that same amount.
The one place I do enjoy speed modules is situations where one resource is blocking others. For instance, if Petroleum is near max and is shutting your refineries down, a couple of Petroleum-> Solid Fuel chemical plants to get rid of the surplus do benefit a lot from speed modules.

[Cerulean]

One efficiency module = 32.5 copper + 15 iron + 2 plastic
One solar panel = 27.5 copper + 40 iron
If we count the 2 plastic as 5 things, then one efficiency module costs 73% as much as one solar panel.

Solar panels generate 60kW during full daylight, so actual return is 0.7*60=42kW, so 73% of a solar panel is pretty close to 30kW.
If you slot an efficiency module into something that was using 100kW power draw, you break even on resources compared to a solar panel.
Mining drills use 90kW, so strictly from an electricity perspective it's not worth slotting efficiency modules into them compared to just building more solar.
Assembly module IIs use 150kW, so assuming your assembly module is running more than 66% of the time it's worth putting efficency modules in those.
Electric furnaces use 180kW, so it's worth putting efficiency modules in those provided they're running at least 55% of the time.

In practice, I put efficiency modules in my pumpjacks and mining drills to reduce pollution, and I don't care that it's not quite as electricity-efficient.
I also put them in my electric furnaces if I have spares.

[Engimage]

I use Efficiency modules 1 in mining outposts to reduce pollution. I do use them as well early game to reduce Assembler energy consumption to reduce coal consumption.
Solar panels seam to be more effective in general but you need almost equal amount of accumulators to fully replace efficiency modules and those are really much harder to produce cause of oil. Also pollution reducing really helps early to mid game to reduce biter attack frequency until you can set up a solit wall-laser defence perimeter. After that its only about mining outposts as the core base is pretty much isolated and pollution never reaches its edges anyways.

[BlakeMW]

Didn't do math for that but I think with efficiency modules you can do coal liquification to solid fuel and get more energy as an output than coal does.

For these kinds of questions, productivity modules are always the better choice.
This should be painfully obvious after even a quick glance at the numbers involved (several MJ worth of fuel vs some hundred kJ of power).

edit: Deleted my old post

The change to require steam makes coal liq a lot more energy intensive.

1 coal (8MJ) becomes 133.5 steam
1 coal liq requires 50 steam
This means it requires 3MJ of extra fuel-energy per cycle

This is even higher than the base consumption of the refinery (420kW * 5 = 2.1MW), and efficiency modules can't touch that 3MJ penalty. It might just be possible with prod3+speed beacon setups to cover that extra 3 MJ energy penalty but there's no way it's happening with tier1 modules because even before the water->steam change it was very finely balanced with profit margins in fractions of a MJ, and IMO prod3 modules are usually too expensive to use in relatively low yielding / low scarcity recipes like coal liq. You can basically forget about using coal liq to get an energy advantage, and if you can it'll be competing with eff3 modules for the least efficient way to save/generate energy. It's fine to use coal liq to make vehicle fuel of course, since solid fuel offers other advantages.

[Aeternus]

This is even higher than the base consumption of the refinery (420kW * 5 = 2.1MW), and efficiency modules can't touch that 3MJ penalty. It might just be possible with prod3+speed beacon setups to cover that extra 3 MJ energy penalty but there's no way it's happening with tier1 modules because even before the water->steam change it was very finely balanced with profit margins in fractions of a MJ, and IMO prod3 modules are usually too expensive to use in relatively low yielding / low scarcity recipes like coal liq. You can basically forget about using coal liq to get an energy advantage, and if you can it'll be competing with eff3 modules for the least efficient way to save/generate energy. It's fine to use coal liq to make vehicle fuel of course, since solid fuel offers other advantages.

That is if you burn the coal, instead of the solid fuel you can make from the light oil (or cracked heavy oil) from the liquified products. Do that, with efficiency modules reducing energy consumption, or productivity modules increasing output, and the calculation goes in another direction, because at that point, the modules -are- touching the 3MJ penalty by using an oil product instead of the raw resource.

[BlakeMW]

That is if you burn the coal, instead of the solid fuel you can make from the light oil (or cracked heavy oil) from the liquified products. Do that, with efficiency modules reducing energy consumption, or productivity modules increasing output, and the calculation goes in another direction, because at that point, the modules -are- touching the 3MJ penalty by using an oil product instead of the raw resource.

Yeah with enough prod3 modules you can get into the positives, it's just not practical because by the time you can afford to use prod3+speed beacon for low yielding recipes you'll have much better options for electricity generation (i.e. solar/accu or nuke). The numbers are a lot better for making fuel for purposes other than generating electricity (that is when the electricity comes from anything other than solid fuel), prod1 modules tend to be a big win in that case. It probably also works out favorably to burn the heavy and light oil and siphon off the petroleum for manufacturing.