Factorio Forums

Bauer wrote:I get the point re speed modules.
I have a problem with efficency modules. I would love to use them, but I don't see the point.

Eff1 modules have limited usefulness in the early game. A watt saved by an eff1 module is cheaper than a watt generated by solar/accu in any machine consuming more than about 150kW, however it is not cheaper than coal or nuclear. A watt saved by an eff2/eff3 module is so much more expensive than a watt generated by solar/accu it's not funny.

The pollution reduction can be quantified. A spawner needs to absorb a certain amount of pollution in order to generate an attacker, for example a Small Biter costs 200 pollution, a Behemoth Biter costs 20000 pollution. So an electric mining drill (9 pollution) would generate a small biter every 21s, you can calculate how much it costs to kill that small biter - for example in the early game it would be about 1 iron plate worth of regular ammo and as such a mining drill in the worst case scenario is wasting 1 iron plate every 21s in order to slay the biters it is attracting. Eff1 modules cost roughly 60 plates. 3 Eff1 modules will reduce that by 0.8 iron plates every 21s or 0.04 plates/s, and it would take (3 * 60 / 0.04) = 4500s or 1.25 hours for the modules to pay off - but note they also save energy so the real payoff time is a bit quicker (for example if using coal, they'll save you 1 coal ever 55s, it's much less than the pollution reduction benefit but still something). A 1.25 hour payoff isn't terrible, but that's using a very low-efficiency way of killing biters, flame turrets kill biters for essentially free and so do laser turrets. When you have a way of killing biters for essentially free, efficiency modules never pay off in terms of pollution reduction.

And a quick note about evolution: The game tends to get easier as evolution gets higher assuming you update to weapons that don't deal physical damage, in particular the worst phase is small spitters because individually they are produced so cheaply and they have a lot more firepower than the equivalent "cost" in medium spitters, furthermore lasers lose massive damage to overkill on them and because they spread out so widely flamethrowers are not that effective and also suffering greatly from overkill. If you're using good weapons (flame and lasers) it only gets better as evolution gets higher. So reducing pollution to avoid raising evolution factor is pretty pointless.

So to summarize:

Eff1 modules are an okay way to manage power consumption if you are using solar/accu, but if you're using coal or nuclear you're better off just making more generation. Eff2/eff3 modules are never useful because it's so much easier to generate a clean watt than to save a watt.
In terms of pollution reduction in the best case an eff1 module has a payoff time of about 1 hour, that assumes shooting biters with regular ammo and no/low bullet damage upgrades. Eff2 and Eff3 modules have a much sadder time to payoff: about 5 hours for Eff2, about 20 hours for Eff3 - and that's still assuming using un-upgraded regular ammo! Basically once you start using fire and laser then efficiency modules of any tier never pays off.
Using Eff3 modules in a beacon is hilariously retarded and there's no good reason to do it - essentially for the reasons above, you're better off building more clean power generation and eliminating biters with defenses. But to add insult to injury, Eff3 beacons compare most unfavorably with a "wide" build using eff1 modules - in both cases you can't get below -80% and eff1 is ridiculously cheaper. (there is a very niche build using a combination of speed3 and eff3 modules, to get both a speed bonus and -80% consumption, this results in creating items for less pollution than normal -80%: the ROI time for this build would be horrendous, like hundreds of hours)

Use eff1 modules if you like in the early-mid game, but efficiency modules have no long term role.

BlakeMW wrote: So to summarize:

Eff1 modules are an okay way to manage power consumption if you are using solar/accu, but if you're using coal or nuclear you're better off just making more generation. And eff2/eff3 modules are never useful because it's so much easier to generate a clean watt than to save a watt.
In terms of pollution reduction in the best case an eff1 module has a payoff time of about 1 hour, that assumes shooting biters with regular ammo and no/low bullet damage upgrades. Eff2 and Eff3 modules have a much sadder time to payoff: about 5 hours for Eff2, about 20 hours for Eff3 - and that's still assuming using un-upgraded regular ammo! Basically once you start using fire and laser then efficiency modules of any tier never pays off.

Use eff1 modules if you like in the early-mid game, but efficiency modules have no long term role.

That's a pity. Game design-wise.
And also for me because I just set-up a production and produced 5k T3 eff. modules.
What do you reckon, shoult I keep them or send them to NIL:

Using Eff1 modules in miners, smelters and generally all factory in early-mid game saves a ton of power and dramatically reduces pollution generated by your factory. This is a really good thing if you play with biters and can't afford a wall of laser turrets.

Have in mind that namely mining drills and pumpjacks generate the most of pollution. So while the energy saving is not substantial here the pollution will reduce greatly.
Also consuming less power early game when you have only steam severely reduces pollution from your power plant.

As to Eff3 modules...
Yes I would send them to space if I could. However shotgunning them in chest is reasonably cheaper.

Bauer wrote: That's a pity. Game design-wise.
And also for me because I just set-up a production and produced 5k T3 eff. modules.
What do you reckon, shoult I keep them or send them to NIL:

It's not a stupid idea to stuff eff modules into every unoccupied slot (meaning any recipe that can't take productivity). You can even use 3x Eff3 and 1x Speed3 to get a machine with -80% consumption and +50% speed - it's not worth making modules for, but hey, if you have the things laying around then enjoy the most energy-efficient and lowest polluting item production possible.

Efficiency modules are the ones most struggling to find a place in endgame. I frequently use Efficiency 1 modules in mid game after acquiring Electric furnaces because I can put 2xEff1s in them and they cost 40% of 180kW power. Steel furnaces comsume fuel at a 180kW rate, but don't have any efficiency losses like Boilers do (which are 50% efficient, meaning they consume 2x as much energy value in fuel as the power (value of the steam) they produce). But even with those efficiency losses I am still save 20% on fuel consumption by switching to Electric furnaces with Efficiency module 1s in them. I can increase that savings to 40% with Eff2s but those cost a LOT more in fixed costs and are higher tech. The only real use I see for Eff3s is the 3xEff3, 1xSpd3 setups in Assem3s, which has a very high fixed cost, but has the best possible production to energy cost ratio.
The real main benefit of using such a setup is the greatly reduced pollution generated (this is determined by machine base rate, modified by energy usage modifier times pollution modifier), which can take a major load off of your defenses.

Eff1 modules are cheap enough that they can be tossed into miners to cut down your pollution by a good chunk, and at the edges where it matters.

The real issue with efficiency modules is the opportunity cost. When they cost the same as spd or prod you're still trying to put all your resources into making prod/spd for your asms.

One very niche use for eff2 is putting them in pumpjacks. This halves the pollution output compared with eff1 (actually more when taking terrain pollution absorb into account) and can make "stealth" pumping outposts deep in biter territory. Although I find this isn't half as useful as it was before the oil abundance overhauls, back in .12 I tended to find you'd need to extract oil from an area about 4x that of iron ore extraction (or speedjack like crazy), now I find there's plenty of oil within the area from which I extract iron. So not much need for pumping outposts deep in biter territory, but hypothetically I guess it could happen.

BlakeMW wrote:One very niche use for eff2 is putting them in pumpjacks. This halves the pollution output compared with eff1 (actually more when taking terrain pollution absorb into account) and can make "stealth" pumping outposts deep in biter territory. Although I find this isn't half as useful as it was before the oil abundance overhauls, back in .12 I tended to find you'd need to extract oil from an area about 4x that of iron ore extraction (or speedjack like crazy), now I find there's plenty of oil within the area from which I extract iron. So not much need for pumping outposts deep in biter territory, but hypothetically I guess it could happen.

Coal liquefaction also means oil products are much easier to acquire.

stm wrote:I have a question about the use of speed modules (All sizes):
Under the assumption, that we can neglect setup costs (That is the cost of infrastructure etc.), why would I want to use speed modules anywhere except at oil-wells?
Isn't it just better to just build more assemblers etc. instead? This even has the advantage, that you won't run into problems with insertes, and space is cheap, while energy -- though not exactly problematic -- does cost (except if you want to go solar, but then that takes the whole fun out of it anyway).
The only item, where this would not be possible are pump-jacks, which are limmited in number and thus a combination of efficiency and speed modules wins at some point.
But anywhere else (Not talking about ingredience in recipies)?
Stm

1. some item took too long to make, Like high level research beaker. So you will need beacon to shorten their craft, and you base will save some space

2. Some mod have ingredient that require a lot of time.


3. More assembler : bigger base : vunerable factory (if you add biter)

Hellatze wrote: 3. More assembler : bigger base : vunerable factory (if you add biter)

But according to [Moderated by Koub], currently the end game is boring and not challenging at all?

stm wrote: Under the assumption, that we can neglect setup costs (That is the cost of infrastructure etc.) ...

Isn't base defense and maintenance part of "setup cost" which is neglected?

BlakeMW wrote:The pollution reduction can be quantified. A spawner needs to absorb a certain amount of pollution in order to generate an attacker, for example a Small Biter costs 200 pollution, a Behemoth Biter costs 20000 pollution. So an electric mining drill (9 pollution) would generate a small biter every 21s, you can calculate how much it costs to kill that small biter - for example in the early game it would be about 1 iron plate worth of regular ammo and as such a mining drill in the worst case scenario is wasting 1 iron plate every 21s in order to slay the biters it is attracting. Eff1 modules cost roughly 60 plates. 3 Eff1 modules will reduce that by 0.8 iron plates every 21s or 0.04 plates/s, and it would take (3 * 60 / 0.04) = 4500s or 1.25 hours for the modules to pay off - but note they also save energy so the real payoff time is a bit quicker (for example if using coal, they'll save you 1 coal ever 55s, it's much less than the pollution reduction benefit but still something). A 1.25 hour payoff isn't terrible, but that's using a very low-efficiency way of killing biters, flame turrets kill biters for essentially free and so do laser turrets. When you have a way of killing biters for essentially free, efficiency modules never pay off in terms of pollution reduction.

I think that quantification misses one key factor to translate into in-game results: the terrain absorbs pollution at a flat rate too. So even a 20% reduction in gross pollution can translate to a 100% reduction in pollution reaching the nearest biter nest if there were a couple hundred trees between your mines and the nest.

So it not only has a potentially much greater effect on reducing biters than estimated above, but also reduces the effective foot-print of small expansions and whether you need to worry about defending them at all.

I used "the worst case" because it's actually the *best* case for the eff modules. Like if say 50% of the pollution is absorbed by terrain then the payoff is twice as long.

Speed Modules negate the speed loss of productivity modules. Productivity modules essentially give you free production without the use of extra materials. Coupling the speed modules with the productivity modules allows you to produce more product at no additional cost in materials and at little to no speed penalty. The only thing lost is electricity, which is plentiful since nuclear.

You can build more assemblers if you want or use modules if you find it more practical. In most games there are no technical reason to choose. If you make very high productivity base then limited computing power makes moduled and beaconed setups better. Game can not handle many thousands of assemblers (especially with belts).

I use typically especially productivity modules in assemblers but not beacons. They are too unrealistic and childish in my opinion. I prefer large train worlds with separate large factories and train transports between them.

Both efficiency and speed modules have already been explained fairly well. Efficiency is useful for an early game niche when solar power is young and biter aggro needs to be managed. Beyond that they don't have a use late game. The main reason is because of how beacons are and how their effects stack.

Beacons burn a lot of energy to multiply the effect of modules in an AoE. Increasing the speed of a speed3 assembler is good. Increasing the speed of a prod3 assembler is great. Increasing the energy efficiency of either assembler is basically pointless. The beacon burns so much energy on its own that spending a lot of energy to gain an energy bonus becomes a self defeating strategy. There is a better energy efficiency to be gained by making the prod3 machine faster, and you get the very useful resource bonus at the same time. In that respect boosting Prod3's with speed3 beacons becomes the true end game.

I'm not sure there's a way to make the efficiency module viable, or even decent for the end game. One option I amused myself with was adding an extra pollution reduction on the eff2(20%) and eff3(30%). That seems a stopgap measure at best. Ultimately players want more resources and they want more factory. The efficiency module doesn't give either, and as long there is no harm caused by consuming vast quantities of energy or being a super polluter there's no real need to concern oneself over it.

bobucles wrote:One option I amused myself with was adding an extra pollution reduction on the eff2(20%) and eff3(30%). That seems a stopgap measure at best. Ultimately players want more resources and they want more factory. The efficiency module doesn't give either, and as long there is no harm caused by consuming vast quantities of energy or being a super polluter there's no real need to concern oneself over it.

I've also contemplated (and suggested) a pollution modifier, a -15% / -30% pollution modifier would be enough to matter. A prod3 module provides a +10% pollution modifier (+40% total in Assembler 3) and to make a meaningful reduction in pollution you'd want the modifier to be deeply negative, 4 eff3 modules (i.e. 4 eff3 beacons) would then apply a -120% modifier, resulting in a total of -80%, which would be a reasonable cap on how negative pollution modifier can go, and reduce the pollution-per-item to something like 1/7th. Of course, in alternating rows you'd miss out on +100% speed (about +30% effective speed on top of the +300% you already have) which makes the ROI and space utilization worse. So you'd be trading off a moderate amount of very beneficial modifier (speed), for a large amount of mostly useless modifier (pollution) - a min/maxer will definitely go for speed, but there would at least be an alternative which would look good to some players - those who want to play efficiently and also want to be ecologically friendly. It would definitely be a better state of affairs than eff3 modules being useless except as a component of Power Armor II.

Don't forget that speed and productivity reduce pollution in terms of pollution per item made.

They seem to have balanced that for productivity 3's (+10% productivity, +10% pollution), but not for speed.
I know there is also a pollution effect tied to energy used, so both productivity and speed do increase pollution per second.
But the net per item is lower with 4 prod 3 and 8 speed beacons (that may only be vs 4 prod 3 with no beacons, I can't start the game now to look).
And this is all assuming energy itself is clean (nuclear or solar).