Productivity modules: where do you draw the line?

[BlakeMW]

The investment is fine, as long as you keep in mind that it takes ~15 HOURS to amortize with a perfect setup (i.e. including beacons and all); it's what Dave has determined in that other thread.

Except when you've already put productivity modules into the high yield parts of the chain (copper wire, electronic circuits, blue circuits) it ends up being about 1/3rd that - about 4 hours, or even as low as 2-3 hours if you've gone full stack productivity. Nothing really to a factory which is going to run for 30+ hours. It's all about economies of scale .

[siggboy]

The investment is fine, as long as you keep in mind that it takes ~15 HOURS to amortize with a perfect setup (i.e. including beacons and all); it's what Dave has determined in that other thread.

Except when you've already put productivity modules into the high yield parts of the chain (copper wire, electronic circuits, blue circuits) it ends up being about 1/3rd that - about 4 hours, or even as low as 2-3 hours if you've gone full stack productivity. Nothing really to a factory which is going to run for 30+ hours. It's all about economies of scale .

I was talking strictly about prod3 in furnaces, in other machines the amortization can of course be much faster (Dave has published a lot of example numbers for EC machines, usually in the range of 1-2 hours).

[BlakeMW]

So was I. The point is that when you have a full stack productivity it costs a lot less ore to create each productivity module.


Without any productivity modules the raw resource cost of a prod3 module is:
30x water
1481.2x crude-oil
2000x copper-ore
1x alien-artifact
190x coal
1083x iron-ore

When you have full stack productivity it comes to something like:

400 copper-ore
600 crude-oil
80 coal
260 iron-ore
(Those numbers are a little approximate)

Which makes each module way more affordable in terms of raw ore.

[Linosaurus]

So was I. The point is that when you have a full stack productivity it costs a lot less ore to create each productivity module.

I find this counterintuitive, but you are right. It makes more sense to me if I assume all the modules in the rest of the factory have already payed for themselves.

[vanatteveldt]

Although I agree with Blake, after you have productivity modules in all your refiners, chemical plants, smelters, and circuit producers ... how many more modules do you actually need?

[Lee_newsum]

Productivity modules= 4.
I use 4 in all my non mod-ed games in a Assembling machine 3 Producing Alien Science Pack.
the way I play I have a lot of all over thinks you can make.

[AutoMcD]

I think it's kind of funny that the alien artifacts universally are regarded as valuable.. but it seems to me that it's the only truly renewable resource!
Simply happens to be one that you must manually gather.

[siggboy]

It's because combat in Factorio is annoying as fuck, and not the least amount of fun. Not in the defense and certainly not in the offense. (And yes, I know about quintuple energy shield II with triple exoskeleton and destroyer capsules.)

[Supercheese]

It's because combat in Factorio is annoying as fuck, and not the least amount of fun. Not in the defense and certainly not in the offense. (And yes, I know about quintuple energy shield II with triple exoskeleton and destroyer capsules.)

With an orbital weapons platform, it becomes more fun IMO.

[siggboy]

I set the biter frequency to "none". That's what made it fun again for me :). Shotguns are used to clear forests, now, and for nothing else.

[taiiat]

It's because combat in Factorio is annoying as fuck, and not the least amount of fun. Not in the defense and certainly not in the offense.

to each his own, but i find the Tank rather fun to fight with. sniping out single targets with AP Shells(or columns of targets) or taking out groups with HE Shells, MG for low density trash.
on foot is pretty dull though.

[AutoMcD]

Sure, the combat can be dull. We are dealing with predictable bugs.
But I could feel the same way about running out of ore and having to build out to another patch?

My point was simply that enemy camps will re-appear. The ores do not.

[siggboy]

If there was a way to abuse the fact that biters respawn to collect alien artifacts automatically (i.e. tree farm for aliens :), then I couldn't care less about productivity for science-4.

On a map with standard settings, the player will probably collect more than enough artifacts just while they are making room for a few additional outposts. This is even more true if you play with RSO (due to the need to expand more).

In that sense it's really not necessary to stretch alien artifacts with productivity, as you usually have more than enough of them in a long game. Researching Follower Robot Count is really pointless after you can have 65ish Destroyers out, so there's no need for the full, theoretical amount that you'd need to research everything.

In my last few games I've always used a mod that increased the cost of research substantially, so I've needed a lot of those artifacts. Going on alien safari was getting really old after a while, and I was glad that productivity modules exist.