Mods for UPS and Performance?

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erickeeper
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Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by erickeeper »

Are there any mods that can help improve UPS performance with minimal gameplay changes?

I'm envisioning something like Factorissimo2, but instead of the interiors of building being run by the game engine they are simulated or modeled in a much more computationally efficient way. There would probably be a sacrifice of accuracy to make this happen.

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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by ptx0 »

erickeeper wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 7:29 pm
Are there any mods that can help improve UPS performance with minimal gameplay changes?

I'm envisioning something like Factorissimo2, but instead of the interiors of building being run by the game engine they are simulated or modeled in a much more computationally efficient way. There would probably be a sacrifice of accuracy to make this happen.
no, this doesn't exist.

you can try using GTTS to run the game at the same speed while it runs at half the FPS/UPS.

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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by ssilk »

There are mods, which remove bushes, small rocks etc.
Cool suggestion: Eatable MOUSE-pointers.
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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by Qon »

erickeeper wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 7:29 pm
Are there any mods that can help improve UPS performance with minimal gameplay changes?

I'm envisioning something like Factorissimo2, but instead of the interiors of building being run by the game engine they are simulated or modeled in a much more computationally efficient way. There would probably be a sacrifice of accuracy to make this happen.
I was considering making exactly that. But it's a pretty big modding project and I don't have the time and energy for that right now.

There are mods that to it in very specific cases instead of the general. "Someone's nuclear power plant" is a nuclear blueprint turned into a single entity that works about the same and at the same size. And there's maybe some others like it.

There's also many that try to combine several entities into one but does so at reduced footprint. That makes it fairly trivial to increase production and are therefore very OP.

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disentius
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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by disentius »

Mods that can help with UPS, depends on usecase:
Basically anything mod that -used wisely- reduces the number of active entities on a map.

Examples:

- Widechest
- infinite research of robot speed/robot battery capacity/robot cargo capacity
- infinite inserter speed research
- more powerful beacons/modules
- Miniloaders, Therax version
- Deadlock999's stacking beltboxes

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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by Pi-C »

disentius wrote:
Sat Aug 22, 2020 11:33 am
Mods that can help with UPS, depends on usecase:
Basically anything mod that -used wisely- reduces the number of active entities on a map.

Examples:

- Widechest
Haven't checked if they do, but if these chests come with increased inventory, that could be bad for UPS as well.
A good mod deserves a good changelog. Here's a tutorial (WIP) about Factorio's way too strict changelog syntax!

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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by disentius »

You can set the inventory size:)
[EDIT]
(I use 200)
between 10/20 slots.

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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by orzelek »

Pi-C wrote:
Sat Aug 22, 2020 11:39 am
disentius wrote:
Sat Aug 22, 2020 11:33 am
Mods that can help with UPS, depends on usecase:
Basically anything mod that -used wisely- reduces the number of active entities on a map.

Examples:

- Widechest
Haven't checked if they do, but if these chests come with increased inventory, that could be bad for UPS as well.
You need to limit inventory of it in mod settings or it will be quite big.
And whole mod is more of a QoL then UPS help - for train stations having wide chest makes things much easier. You will save on balancing circuitry etc potentially.

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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by Pi-C »

orzelek wrote:
Sat Aug 22, 2020 11:52 am
And whole mod is more of a QoL then UPS help - for train stations having wide chest makes things much easier. You will save on balancing circuitry etc potentially.
Depends on what you do. For trains with mixed cargo, it may still be a challenge to filter individual inserters. For bulk loading/unloading, I agree this could make it easier. :-)
A good mod deserves a good changelog. Here's a tutorial (WIP) about Factorio's way too strict changelog syntax!

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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by disentius »

I use them in 24 beacon setups. saves lots of inserters.

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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by mmmPI »

There was this one : https://mods.factorio.com/mod/UPS-up that was pretty effective but it's been 3 years since last update you can't use it anymore.
In its description the author mention the improvement of game performance making it not worth it to continue.

It made various changes such as making machines something like 5 times faster when active but active 1/5 of the time, (made up numbers just to illustrate). It removed all decoratives, fishes, pollution, biters , items on ground and other thing to reduce savefile size. Also electric drain from most entities.

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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by Impatient »

As some1 already mentioned, increasing ups is all about lowering the amount of active entities for which the game engine needs to calculate or render something each tick.

the first thing that comes to my mind is to switch off particles, water, smoke and tree effects and remove decoratives in the options menu.

you can also play without biters if you like that.

concerning mods, you can look out for mods which simplify whole aspects of the game, eg removing the power or fluid network, if such mods exist.

some1 also mentioned the idea of black box factories, meaning single entities that have eg the same production rate like a whole smelting line. eg instead of 72 furnaces, 144 inserters and x belt pieces, there is just one big furnace entity ( which has to be handled with loaders).

the mods whistle stop factories and big factories come to my mind. but they are more like scenarios i think.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/big-factories

but maybe there are other mods that follow that black box idea.

basically every mod that lowers the required amount of assemblers and the size of the infrastructure to produce at a rate X, lowers ups strain. Like bulk production and bulk moving mods and also faster entity mods. you factory won't look the same though.

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Re: Mods for UPS and Performance?

Post by Kingdud »

erickeeper wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 7:29 pm
Are there any mods that can help improve UPS performance with minimal gameplay changes?

I'm envisioning something like Factorissimo2, but instead of the interiors of building being run by the game engine they are simulated or modeled in a much more computationally efficient way. There would probably be a sacrifice of accuracy to make this happen.
Yes, actually. I created several mods for exactly this purpose:

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/MiningUPSGrade
* Basically, one large miner that (configurable; default 25) is as fast as a certain number of smaller miners. It is no faster, has no higher productivity, and does not take any (meaningfully) less material to build than the miners it replaces. It is, technically, more dense (meaning you can extract at a higher speed) but that's because...beconed miners are a huge PITA to simulate at a 1:1 rate. You WILL need to mine into a chest and use bots to move the ore around.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/KingsNuclearBots
* Speaking of bots, this mod adds in nuclear logistics bots which: 1) do not need power (but take 1500 nuclear fuel cells, a nuclear reactor, and a few other bits, each, to build), 2) can carry full stacks of material in one trip (cargo size 100 iirc). 3) are no faster than normal bots.
* Yes, I realize this changes the game quite a lot, but the pain of building each bot, I feel, balances out the fact that each bot replaces *at least* 10 normal bots, as well as all the roboport infra for charging. Further saving UPS.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/SmelterUPSGrade
* Just like the minerUPSgrade, this does the same thing for smelters. Each smelter no different as 405 (the number you could first in 2-layer nested Factorissimo) electric smelters. No higher productivity, speed, etc. Literally it just gets rid of the need for all the beacons/smelters/inserters/etc on the map. The cost to build it is the cost of all the components you'd have to build anyway, so that's how it is balanced. Don't have a heart attack when you realize it needs like 1800 (or was it 3000+?) speed modules to build *each* bulk smelter. That's how many modules you'd need to build the same number of normal beaconed smelters!

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/EnhancedGridEnergyStores
* Adds higher tier accumulators. Needed for the next mod to be useful / make sense.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/NuclearRebalance
* Overhauls nuclear energy, making it much more realistic. Greatly saves on UPS. Read through the FAQ/mod page for a LOT more info on the why/logic behind this mod.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AssemblerUPSGrade
* Similar to the smelter and mining UPS grade mods, this collapses a (configurable) certain number of buildings into one ASIF (application specific integrated factory) that can only build one thing, but can build that one thing as fast as the same number of smaller buildings, just without the UPS impact of all those (thousands) of smaller entities.
* For example, Speed 3 modules: the resulting building would output 87.5 speed 3 modules per minute, just like the 10 assembler 3s doing the same job would. BUT the ASIF buildings ONLY take raw materials. So you have to figure out a way to load the:
  • 48613 iron plate/minute
  • 21607 plastic bars/minute
  • 67365 copper plate/minute
  • 9375 sulfuric acid/minute
into this one (massive) building. Again, to be clear, those four inputs are all the building accepts. It builds all the intermediates as part of the ASIF design. As such, the recipe cost for building this ASIF factors in (and requires you to build) all of the assembers/beacons/modules/inserters/etc needed to make such a massive fleet of buildings work, so even at a recipe level, you are ONLY saving UPS, nothing else (meaningful).
* The mod also has settings to constrain the maximum size of the building (since, at 10:1, a speed 3 ASIF would end up being like 300+ units on a side) so that the buildings are not massive pains in the ass to place and live with.
* The specific things that can be built with ASIFs are:
  • Green/red/blue Circuits
  • Engines
  • Plastic Bars
  • Low Density Structures
  • Speed 3 modules
  • Prod 3 modules
It may or may not include a petroleum gas ASIF as well. I have some definitions for that in the file, but I don't remember if I actually put that in the mod or not. Essentially, the entire idea behind this mod was the hand full of items that, in a megabase, you end up needing 95% of your assemblers dedicated to building, could be collapsed into a single (or small set of) buildings, dramatically saving UPSs. To that end, I have a 10k sci/m base that still runs at 60 UPS with around a 6ms update time (when I kill off all the biters :p).

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