SOLAR or STEAM [poll]

[BlakeMW]

/c game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.time_factor = game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.time_factor * 0
/c game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.pollution_factor = game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.pollution_factor * 2
/c game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.destroy_factor = game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.destroy_factor * -0.2

Does that mean destroying spawners sets back evolution?

[Lallante]

Almost no-one LIKES solar power/accumulators. We just use it because its so overpowered compared to the pollution and fuel-using steam alternative.

[MeduSalem]

Solid Fuel+Steam it is for me.
...

All of the items above have Efficiency Module 2's inside them to decrease the energy overhead during the refining processes.

I'm also a fan of solid fuel. But technically I think productivity modules give a much greater benefit than efficiency modules, I'm sure someone has calculated this somewhere already, but I couldn't find it.

[Calculation]

So I think with optimal usage of prod3 modules in refinery and chemical plants you can get almost 40% more net energy than with efficiency modules, or perhaps 30% if you're running purely on solid-fuel based steam power. Efficiency modules are still great to use in other machines if you want to improve your energy balance, but the argument in favor of productivity modules in oil refining line is very compelling.

Quite interesting... You encourage me to do some calculations of my own on the matter... I always thought using Efficiency Modules is already the best approach to minize Energy Consumption in relation to Energy Production when it comes to Solid Fuel production.

Altough I will probably have to experiment around finding a Beacon Setup if it is really reliable.

So again, what is the benefit of separated power systems?

I can only think of one word: Reliability

Basically I am using following tiered Electric Network Scheme to ensure safety:

Electric Network Scheme.png (33.63 KiB) Viewed 7583 times

Generally I have 3 seperated Electric Networks:

1. Electric Network I: Powers the entire Oil Production cycle beginning from the Pump Jacks to the final delivery of Solid Fuel to the Boilers. I use a small array of 10-20 Steam Enginges (Small Plant) to power this Network. The belt network transporting the Solid Fuel delivers first to the Boilers in the Small Plant and the excess gets handed through to the Big Plant. This ensures Solid Fuel production is self-sustaining.
2. Electric Network II: Basically Stores all the Energy produced by my 480 Steam Engines (Big Plant) and optionally Solar Panels into Accumulators, but also provides Power Priority to ALL my Laser Turrets (including Outposts). The Turrets take priority over the Accumulators in consumption so if the Turrets start to fire they will use all the Power of both Steam/Solar and if it is not enough they will also take Energy from the Accumulators. Like I wrote earlier in this thread I rarely to never use Solar Panels because they are boring so it's just in the diagram for the sake of completeness.
3. Electric Network III: Basically the Factory and the Mining Outposts. They are located behind the Accumulators. So basically the Factory/Outposts only get energy when the Power Plants have enough energy to fill the Accumulators, which means when the Laser Turrets put heavy drain on the Power Plant + Accumulators the Factory + Outposts will automatically slow down or grind to a halt until the Accumulators can recover.

I do it that way because Defense outweighs Continuous Production in importance. Wouldn't want a destroyed perimeter just because of item greed.

[mooklepticon]

Laser turrets still spike my main grid. I need more petroleum for batteries!!! (Or copper mining needs to give sulfur! Copper sulfide, anyone?)

Could try using hot water storage instead. Set up some extra steam engines connected at the back of your main ones via some tanks. when steamies are running under max capacity the tanks will fill up with hot water, and then when your grid spikes, the steam engines at the back will draw hot water from the tanks instead. I've not tried it myself but apparantly it's a good alternative if you can't afford accumulators.

I didn't think you could store hot water! Awesome, thanks.

[byronczimmer]

I do it that way because Defense outweighs Continuous Production in importance. Wouldn't want a destroyed perimeter just because of item greed.

Well written and reasoned, and agrees with my basic belief that "dead biter" and "slow/no production" far outweighs "live biter eating my stuff up" and "maximum production".

I take from this that it is valuable to separate electric networks in subsystems that can produce power and then "siphon" off the excess to the rest of the system.

[Lee_newsum]

I will add this point as no one has put it up.
if you are going to use Solid fuel use the Steel Furnace NOT the Electric Furnace. if you add 100 to 300 Basic accumulator and add buffer to the fuel line it works well for me
have a look at this map I have 230 Steam engine 500 Basic accumulator.
have fun

[BlakeMW]

I will add this point as no one has put it up.
if you are going to use Solid fuel use the Steel Furnace NOT the Electric Furnace.

If you use eff1 modules the Electric Furnace should come out ahead, both furnaces use 180kW, because boilers are only 50% efficient the Electric Furnace uses 360kW of fuel, but if you use 2x eff1 module the energy use is reduced by 60% which comes to 144kW - it's not a huge benefit, unless you care about the pollution. The Steel Furnace creates 3.6 pollution, the Electric Furnace with 2x eff1 module creates 0.36 pollution directly, and 1.11 from steam power = 1.47 pollution (it actually creates more pollution without the eff1 modules - 3.68 to be precise).

So the steam power usage comes to:
Steel: 180kW of fuel, 3.6 pollution
Electric eff1: 144kW of fuel, 1.47 pollution (Steam)

Now, just looking at those numbers they aren't that impressive for all the added cost of an Electric Furnace + 2xeff1 modules, BUT, the Electric Furnace doesn't require a direct fuel supply which is a pretty big advantage as the factory becomes larger. Although I have at times used logistic bots to deliver solid fuel to steel furnace smelting lines which have ran out of their initial coal (or had their coal diverted to plastics), solid fuel is suitable for delivery by bot even early on because it is consumed so slowly.

[tehroach]

/c game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.time_factor = game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.time_factor * 0
/c game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.pollution_factor = game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.pollution_factor * 2
/c game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.destroy_factor = game.map_settings.enemy_evolution.destroy_factor * -0.2

Does that mean destroying spawners sets back evolution?

Yes it does
IMO destroying bitter installations should set them back for a while, NOT advance them.


Note: I would highly recommend these setting for:
People that want a more relaxed game of Factorio, but find Peaceful mode boring!

or

Our preference for play
which involve a lot of time where my friends and I "redneck rampage" the biter bases in our utes (ie cars, grenades and teir 2 armor only) as we will purposefully engage the enemy underrepresented.
This simple self retardation turn the often "lack-luster" combat of Factorio into "Chaos", which prolongs the combat experience and is a lot of fun.

We often refer to the cars in our game of Factorio as Fords, because of the joke, "The acronym for FORD backwards is Driver Returns On Foot" and player death is common place in our game, giving rise for the need to automate production of flak vests and small arms.

When you basically can't kill Big Worms the the short term process of dealing with bitter bases becomes a much more tactical experience, as you must divide and conquer,
attack weak spots and avoid the range of Big Worms.
As not paying attention and straying too close, often results in the player entering "on foot" mode,
encountering a Medium sized biter in this state can be scary but big ones are just a death sentence, unless your friends intervene and allow for your escape.

The long-term results of this madness, shift paradigms and give rise to some interesting side-effects.
*Old bitter bases that you were able to get to spawners without entering big worm range yield "No Go zones", which end up being dotted through-out your base.
*In the cases where there are too many big worms (or the random gen has strategically placed the big worms), you simply must leave the spawners alone,
"Bitter Sanctuaries" are created, which results in a shifting of the paradigm of wall usage from, walling in your base to walling in bitter bases.
*These "Wildlife Sanctuaries" further add and additional resource sinks for your Factorio economy.

We tend to opt for defending these Wildlife Sanctuaries with machine gun turrets as they consume all three types of ore and can be built closer, without killing the worms and spawners.

[MeduSalem]

If you use eff1 modules the Electric Furnace should come out ahead, both furnaces use 180kW, because boilers are only 50% efficient the Electric Furnace uses 360kW of fuel, but if you use 2x eff1 module the energy use is reduced by 60% which comes to 144kW - it's not a huge benefit, unless you care about the pollution. The Steel Furnace creates 3.6 pollution, the Electric Furnace with 2x eff1 module creates 0.36 pollution directly, and 1.11 from steam power = 1.47 pollution (it actually creates more pollution without the eff1 modules - 3.68 to be precise)..

The lower cap is 20%. With 2 Efficiency Module 2's an Electric Furnace needs only 180kW * 20% = 36kW. With Boilers losing half the energy efficiency you are then back up to 72kW per Electric Furnace.

So Electric Furnaces are far better than Steel Furnaces.

The only advantage Steel furnaces have is that they are only 2x2, meaning you get roughly 1.5 as many Steel Furnaces into the same space as you would get Electric Furnaces. But since space is basically infinite you are not really forced to make the furnace setup so compact.



I tend to use Electric furnaces though together with Beacons:

In my Electric Furnaces there are currently Productivity Module 3s, though Speed Module 3s are also fine if one wants an even more compact smelting setup.
In my Beacons I use Speed Module 3s when I need the performance and I switch to Efficiency Module 3s when I don't need the performance to save energy.

To achieve the Module switching I am using Smart Inserters connected to a circuit network:

1. Average to High Usage Scenario (Storage runs low): A smart Inserter takes the Efficiency Module 3's out of the beacon and another Smart Inserter inserts Speed Module 3s into the Beacon
2. Low to Average Usage Scenario (Storage runs full): A smart inserter takes the Speed Module 3's out of the Beacon and another Smart Inserter inserts Efficiency Module 3s into the Beacon
3. Zero Usage Scenario (Storage is full): A smart inserter takes the Efficiency Module 3's out of the Beacon and no inserter puts anything into the Beacon, which basically shuts down the Beacon and removes the idle Beacon energy usage.

Sadly the inserters require some space too... I wish one could set Filters for the Smart Inserter from the Circuit network. Would make things a lot easier. I guess I might show the contraption in the "Show your creations" board later on... xD

[Lee_newsum]

I will add this point as no one has put it up.
if you are going to use Solid fuel use the Steel Furnace NOT the Electric Furnace.

If you use eff1 modules the Electric Furnace should come out ahead, both furnaces use 180kW, because boilers are only 50% efficient the Electric Furnace uses 360kW of fuel, but if you use 2x eff1 module the energy use is reduced by 60% which comes to 144kW - it's not a huge benefit, unless you care about the pollution. The Steel Furnace creates 3.6 pollution, the Electric Furnace with 2x eff1 module creates 0.36 pollution directly, and 1.11 from steam power = 1.47 pollution (it actually creates more pollution without the eff1 modules - 3.68 to be precise).

So the steam power usage comes to:
Steel: 180kW of fuel, 3.6 pollution
Electric eff1: 144kW of fuel, 1.47 pollution (Steam)

Now, just looking at those numbers they aren't that impressive for all the added cost of an Electric Furnace + 2xeff1 modules, BUT, the Electric Furnace doesn't require a direct fuel supply which is a pretty big advantage as the factory becomes larger. Although I have at times used logistic bots to deliver solid fuel to steel furnace smelting lines which have ran out of their initial coal (or had their coal diverted to plastics), solid fuel is suitable for delivery by bot even early on because it is consumed so slowly.

in the power fun Electric Furnace win but with 100+ of them are running you have to power them from some were, adding "Steam engine" to do that is a lot power. and if you can fit all the Offshore Pump in Water.

[BlakeMW]

If you use eff1 modules the Electric Furnace should come out ahead, both furnaces use 180kW, because boilers are only 50% efficient the Electric Furnace uses 360kW of fuel, but if you use 2x eff1 module the energy use is reduced by 60% which comes to 144kW - it's not a huge benefit, unless you care about the pollution. The Steel Furnace creates 3.6 pollution, the Electric Furnace with 2x eff1 module creates 0.36 pollution directly, and 1.11 from steam power = 1.47 pollution (it actually creates more pollution without the eff1 modules - 3.68 to be precise)..

The lower cap is 20%. With 2 Efficiency Module 2's an Electric Furnace needs only 180kW * 20% = 36kW. With Boilers losing half the energy efficiency you are then back up to 72kW per Electric Furnace.

So Electric Furnaces are far better than Steel Furnaces.

I'm not sure what the life-cycle economics of eff2 modules look like, the furnace costs about 160 "resources", the two eff2 modules cost in the ballpark of 1370 "resources" but a solar panel only costs 67.5 "resources" (the big advantage of eff1 modules is that a watt saved by an eff1 module is often cheaper than a watt generated by solar). Clearly with the eff2 modules being so extremely expensive compared with adding power generation you aren't going to bother with eff2 modules on the basis of electricity savings. As for pollution savings, you can cut the pollution from 0.36 direct to 0.18 direct - now 0.36 pollution is already a very small amount and you need to consider the cost in pollution of making the eff2 modules, that's tricky to calculate but a super back of the envelope calculation with eff1 module everywhere indicates the pollution per "resource" will be in the ballpark of 4-5 and the 2 eff2 modules would be responsible for ~6000 pollution and it'd thus take about 9 hours to result in a pollution saving.

So electricity savings: never, because the solar/accu is simply much cheaper, pollution savings = 9 hours.

As for steam power: The pollution is simple, you'll probably get a pollution saving in about 2 hours. But as for the electricity costs, the only cost to steam power is coal or solid fuel, with 2x eff1 modules the furnace requires 144kW of fuel or 0.018 coal/s and eff2 modules will halve that to 0.009 coal/s, if you value 1 coal the same as 1 resource (about 1 iron plate) then it'd take about 40 hours of play time to recover the costs of the eff2 modules. So I guess for a factory which is planned to be played for a hundred hours, it could be justified.

Now as the furnace beacon builds, those I can get behind. Using more electricity is much more easily justified than saving electricity especially when you get productivity gains out of it. But the eff3 modules would suffer similiar problems to the eff2 modules, but greater - an extremely long time to recover the costs. Since the beacons can multiply the effect to cover 8 machines (turning 1 module into effectively 4 modules) I'm thinking the cost-recovery times would be about equal to that of eff2 modules - about 40 hours.
But I'm not sure what the combination of prod3 and eff3 looks like, problem is prod3 slows down manufacturing a lot, if you take 40% longer per item you also use 40% more power

in the power fun Electric Furnace win but with 100+ of them are running you have to power them from some were, adding "Steam engine" to do that is a lot power. and if you can fit all the Offshore Pump in Water.

Honestly steam engines are easy. I consider up to about 100MW to be entirely reasonable to provide with steam - that would power nearly 1400 electric furnaces with eff1 modules. I once built a 408MW steam power plant, the offshore pumps were a nuisance, but I did it. I think that fuel supply is actually more challenging than offshore pumps. Fortunately there is Solar/Steam with hot water storage - it cuts fuel requirements and offshore pumps by 70%.

Anyway this is what enough offshore pumps to provide 400MW of steam looks like:


It is not that bad actually. Hooking up the pipes is tedious, but I'm only using about 1/4 the length of shoreline as the length of the power plant, and I could fit about twice as many offshore pumps into that shoreline.

[Ohz]

Both. Steam for main factory, solar for small radars outposts.

[MeduSalem]

I'm not sure what the life-cycle economics of eff2 modules look like, the furnace costs about 160 "resources", the two eff2 modules cost in the ballpark of 1370 "resources" but a solar panel only costs 67.5 "resources" (the big advantage of eff1 modules is that a watt saved by an eff1 module is often cheaper than a watt generated by solar). Clearly with the eff2 modules being so extremely expensive compared with adding power generation you aren't going to bother with eff2 modules on the basis of electricity savings. As for pollution savings, you can cut the pollution from 0.36 direct to 0.18 direct - now 0.36 pollution is already a very small amount and you need to consider the cost in pollution of making the eff2 modules, that's tricky to calculate but a super back of the envelope calculation with eff1 module everywhere indicates the pollution per "resource" will be in the ballpark of 4-5 and the 2 eff2 modules would be responsible for ~6000 pollution and it'd thus take about 9 hours to result in a pollution saving.

So electricity savings: never, because the solar/accu is simply much cheaper, pollution savings = 9 hours.

As for steam power: The pollution is simple, you'll probably get a pollution saving in about 2 hours. But as for the electricity costs, the only cost to steam power is coal or solid fuel, with 2x eff1 modules the furnace requires 144kW of fuel or 0.018 coal/s and eff2 modules will halve that to 0.009 coal/s, if you value 1 coal the same as 1 resource (about 1 iron plate) then it'd take about 40 hours of play time to recover the costs of the eff2 modules. So I guess for a factory which is planned to be played for a hundred hours, it could be justified.

Now as the furnace beacon builds, those I can get behind. Using more electricity is much more easily justified than saving electricity especially when you get productivity gains out of it. But the eff3 modules would suffer similiar problems to the eff2 modules, but greater - an extremely long time to recover the costs. Since the beacons can multiply the effect to cover 8 machines (turning 1 module into effectively 4 modules) I'm thinking the cost-recovery times would be about equal to that of eff2 modules - about 40 hours.
But I'm not sure what the combination of prod3 and eff3 looks like, problem is prod3 slows down manufacturing a lot, if you take 40% longer per item you also use 40% more power

I don't really use Modules because I want to be better off in the long run, though I covered the one-time investment a long time ago because I have been playing on that map for at least 200 hours if not more.

Instead I tend to use Efficiency Modules, or Modules in general because I want to know how far I can push the limits with certain things. Some of the things will never really pay off and I know that, but it's still fun to get something to work.

... and on the other hand I don't really know what else to waste the 10 million Iron/Copper plates on. It's not like there is another resource sink.

Anyway this is what enough offshore pumps to provide 400MW of steam looks like:

[picture]

It is not that bad actually. Hooking up the pipes is tedious, but I'm only using about 1/4 the length of shoreline as the length of the power plant, and I could fit about twice as many offshore pumps into that shoreline.

How do your Steam Engines connect to the boilers in that setup? With a spacing of 1 tile between the Boiler lines it must be pretty ugly to connect the steam engines after the boilers... Could you provide a screen shot from that as well? xD

[vanatteveldt]

As I understand it, Laser Turrets are priority 1 on energy draw, everything else will yield power to the Laser Turrets if they want to fire.
[...]
What am I missing here? Why do we want a "separate" energy grid dedicated to the Lasers?

I don't think anyone actually really answered this, but the main advantage would be that if there are no biters, the factory automatically uses 100% green energy, and you don;t need a complicated setup to switch off the coal generators at night while still having them for emergency purposes (default is (1) solar (2) steam (3) accu, if you're accus are for getting through the night most people would prefer (1) solar (2) accu (3) steam). So, you use coal if and only if biters are attacking, and otherwise run 100% solar without needing a complex setup.

In any case I think you need to separate your power plant grid from your turret grid, to prevent a death spiral where the turret power draw prevents the power plants from operating (either coal unloading + feeding, or solid processing + feeding). So, the two alternatives are to have a special "power plant only" grid, or a "defense only grid", and in the latter case having the main grid solar and the defense grid steam makes a lot of sense (imho)

[BlakeMW]

How do your Steam Engines connect to the boilers in that setup? With a spacing of 1 tile between the Boiler lines it must be pretty ugly to connect the steam engines after the boilers... Could you provide a screen shot from that as well? xD

Well technically it's a variation on the 2/28/20 design so is simpler than you think. Also it's actually a backup steam plant so the connection is done with 4 small pumps to 20 steam engines:



According to some factorio fluid dynamic theories it shouldn't work because it branches then rejoins the pipes, but in practice every strand of 20 steam engines produces its full output of 10.2MW - perhaps this is because of the small pumps mediating the flow. As noted above the steam engine strands are 20 long, but you'll probably note that after every 4 strands of steam engines there is a solitary steam engine which bypasses the pumps - they aren't connected to the main grid and are emergency backup power for the pumps if the dedicated accus run out (when the pumps are running at 100% they'll starve the emergency steam engines - but if the pumps run at less than 100% some water will make it to the emergency steam engines which will make up the electricity shortfall). The pumps only actually run when the combinator tells them to so usually draw no power at all.

FWIW that powerplant is probably the insanest thing I've ever built (especially with the cute little emergency emergency steam engines). I was going to build a 1GW emergency steam plant, but when I realized that would be 2000 steam engines I scaled down my ambitions to a mere 800 steam engines.

[MeduSalem]

Well technically it's a variation on the 2/28/20 design so is simpler than you think. Also it's actually a backup steam plant so the connection is done with 4 small pumps to 20 steam engines:

[picture]

According to some factorio fluid dynamic theories it shouldn't work because it branches then rejoins the pipes, but in practice every strand of 20 steam engines produces its full output of 10.2MW - perhaps this is because of the small pumps mediating the flow.

Yeah, I tried the branch+rejoin myself 2 years ago and it didn't quite work out... the pipes bugged out completely and only after demolishing and rebuilding without the branch+rejoin they started to work again. That's why I am avoiding that kind of setup ever since.

But I guess the small pumps might somehow help to deal with the problem. But then again if I use 2/28/20 setups then I usually have 1 long line of 28 boilers instead of 2, but it obviously increases the depth of the entire plant considerably but on the other hand it doesn't have to be as wide anymore.

It's either that or I use 2/2x14/2x10 setup, basically just joining 2 Offshore pumps to one pipe and then splitting before the Boilers into 2 lines of 14/10 setups again. It reduces the pipemess around the shorelines.

So basically Join+Branch works but Branch+Join doesn't.

[BlakeMW]

I suspect that sometimes it has to do with direction of flow too - a setup which works in one orientation may not work in another. I certainly have experienced the join/branch/join thing completely crap out, that was with a hot water storage power plant, for whatever reason a single string of 28 boilers wont run at 100% when filling tanks (only about 23 of the boilers operate), 2 strings of 14 work fine, but you need to have each string of 14 have its own offshore pump and not sharing a pipe, if 2 offshore pumps share a pipe which then branches all the water ends up going down one boiler string and you get lukewarm water filling the tanks. Small pumps can be used as mediators when branching and small pumps can also be used to make a string of 28 fill tanks at 100%, in fact small pumps can make pretty much anything work, but except for emergency power plants I prefer to avoid small pumps when a passive design can be even more compact.

IIRC I built the above design with 2x14 so I could use burner inserters, 2 rows of boilers happens to be exactly the width required to add a row of small pumps so I couldn't save any width by using a single row of 28. I think tho if I was building such a large power plant again I'd use 28 boiler rows and just use long-handed inserters or perhaps even split the belt lots of times since each tile of belt stores 8 coal and belt storage is not to be underestimated.

[mooklepticon]

I tend to use Electric furnaces though together with Beacons:

In my Electric Furnaces there are currently Productivity Module 3s, though Speed Module 3s are also fine if one wants an even more compact smelting setup.
In my Beacons I use Speed Module 3s when I need the performance and I switch to Efficiency Module 3s when I don't need the performance to save energy.

To achieve the Module switching I am using Smart Inserters connected to a circuit network:

1. Average to High Usage Scenario (Storage runs low): A smart Inserter takes the Efficiency Module 3's out of the beacon and another Smart Inserter inserts Speed Module 3s into the Beacon
2. Low to Average Usage Scenario (Storage runs full): A smart inserter takes the Speed Module 3's out of the Beacon and another Smart Inserter inserts Efficiency Module 3s into the Beacon
3. Zero Usage Scenario (Storage is full): A smart inserter takes the Efficiency Module 3's out of the Beacon and no inserter puts anything into the Beacon, which basically shuts down the Beacon and removes the idle Beacon energy usage.

I love this! I've been looking for a way to add more control over my inventory levels, and this is it! I didn't know that beacons could be switched like that. I've not used them, yet. This is awesome.

(I've already managed my liquids with pumps and logic, so I wanted a way to do that with solid goods.)

[MeduSalem]

I love this! I've been looking for a way to add more control over my inventory levels, and this is it! I didn't know that beacons could be switched like that. I've not used them, yet. This is awesome.

(I've already managed my liquids with pumps and logic, so I wanted a way to do that with solid goods.)

Problem just is that the module-switch mechanic (Chests+Inserters for example) take a lot of space, which you usually don't have around beacons. You need basically at least 2 Smart Inserters for each Module type, so... 2 for Speed Modules, 2 for Efficiency Modules. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to control exactly which Module to put inside/take from the beacon.

That's why it would be really, really nice if the circuit networks allowed to set the item filter of Smart Inserters. It would simplify the concept of "Smart Beacons", but also from "Smart Furnaces" quite a lot.

From what I understand the devs plan on enabling circuit network control for all inserters and they plan on renaming the Smart Inserter to Filter inserter (because the filters are the only thing that makes them different then). When they do this I really hope that they make the Filters of the Filter Inserters work with Circuit network conditions, because otherwise it is a missed out opportunity.

[mooklepticon]

Problem just is that the module-switch mechanic (Chests+Inserters for example) take a lot of space, which you usually don't have around beacons. You need basically at least 2 Smart Inserters for each Module type, so... 2 for Speed Modules, 2 for Efficiency Modules. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to control exactly which Module to put inside/take from the beacon.

Giving me more control over the beacons (and my production line) at the cost of beacon effectiveness is a worthwhile trade off, for me.