why prod modules are important

[mrvn]

Let's try to move the discussion away from Kindergarden back to something fact based...

According to https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... tASIURsgoA a single productivity module 3 requires 1200 coal + copper + iron, when using prod 3 along all processing steps (which, given everyone seems to be in agreement that miners should be the last thing to get modules, seems a sensible requirement).

Replacing the coal liquification I used with oil I get the same numbers with helmod.

To repay itself, a single prod 3 module thus needs to produce 1200 extra ore, which with 10% productivity, will happen after 1200 / 10% = 12000 mining cycles. (Or 12000 / 0,5/s = 6h 40min at speed 1.) (When using multiple prod modules, the modules will still repay themselves after 12000 mining cycles since cost increase and productivity increase will cancel out.)

Since prod modules have a speed penalty, to make meaningful comparisons to the mining productivity research, we need to bring the speed back up to 1.
Possible arrangements are e.g.
- 2 prod 3 + 1 speed 2 without beacons: 2614,57 / 20% / 0,5/s ~ 7h 16min https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... FWgk0BAA==
- 3 prod 3 in the miner + 3 speed 2 in 2 beacons, assuming you can hit 8 miners with each pair of beacons: 29683,745 / 8 / 30% / 0,5/s ~ 6h 52min https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... mo65GEAA==

That all makes sense and aligns with my numbers. My setup used more speed modules and speed modules 3:

beaconed-miners.png (595.13 KiB) Viewed 2552 times

That gives each miner a mining speed of 1.275 ore/s + 30% bonus = 1.6575 ore/s over your number of 0.5 ore/s + 30% = 0.65 ore/s. Or just looking at the ore from productivity 1.275 * 30% = 0.3825 ore/s vs. 0.5 * 30% = 0.15 ore/s. My calculation used more ore but also more resources for the speed modules 3. Overall that is a win in speed.

So far that matches what I got with the explained differences.

Mining productivity 4 research takes 281498,667 ore to research https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... OZxDztCw==. In a single miner, it'd take 281498,667 / 10% / 0,5s ~ 1564h ~ 65d to repay itself. When comparing to the 8 miner + 2 beacons setup above, the brake even point is at ~227,6 miners. Taking mining productivity 4 through 6 instead, the brake even point doubles to ~455,2 miners.

To break even you need to get the 1564h (93840 minutes) down to 6h 52min (412 minutes): 93840 / 412 = 227.8. Close enough. Where my numbers differ is the cost for the research. I have 345556 ore for level 4, which will be the coal liquification I used. Again close enough. My numbers come out to 479.75 miners to match your 455.2 miners.

Obviously the less efficient the productivity module setup, the longer it takes to break even, the fewer miners you need to match that with mining research. To match the 1 hour break even I calculated you need 3128 miners to my 3838. A difference explained by the difference in ore used.

So thank you for confirming my numbers. So it's two people doing the math getting basically the same result now.

[aka13]

placing a PM3 module in an assembly 3 producing green circuit is more than 9 times better than placing it on a mining drill.

Much more than 9 times. Firstly, you can straightforwardly get much better value from the PMs in the assemblers by interleaving with beacons; if you try to do that with miners you end up with gaps in coverage of the ore patch. Secondly, the module bonus is only additive with the tech productivity bonus for mining, but the speed hit from the modules scales all the production down. Once you have a good few levels of mining tech, this is a very bad deal.

The payback time for high-level PMs in miners is far too long to be worth it: there are always going to be better things to do with those resources. Most obviously, you can use them to expand or improve your science factory and speed up the rate at which you are improving your mining tech. Three extra levels is like 3 free PM3s in every single mining drill, but without the slowdown, or the energy cost, or the extra pollution.

I strongly disagree. Every second a patch lasts longer, is a second not spent setting up mining outposts. If I can produce enough PD3s to cover all my manufacturing, I am not placing any miners without full PD3s anywhere. Maybe on normal settings you can ignore them, but on marathon this is definately something you want to do ASAP, do everything you can with pd3.

[mmmPI]

placing a PM3 module in an assembly 3 producing green circuit is more than 9 times better than placing it on a mining drill.

Much more than 9 times. Firstly, you can straightforwardly get much better value from the PMs in the assemblers by interleaving with beacons; if you try to do that with miners you end up with gaps in coverage of the ore patch. Secondly, the module bonus is only additive with the tech productivity bonus for mining, but the speed hit from the modules scales all the production down. Once you have a good few levels of mining tech, this is a very bad deal.

The payback time for high-level PMs in miners is far too long to be worth it: there are always going to be better things to do with those resources. Most obviously, you can use them to expand or improve your science factory and speed up the rate at which you are improving your mining tech. Three extra levels is like 3 free PM3s in every single mining drill, but without the slowdown, or the energy cost, or the extra pollution.

I strongly disagree. Every second a patch lasts longer, is a second not spent setting up mining outposts. If I can produce enough PD3s to cover all my manufacturing, I am not placing any miners without full PD3s anywhere. Maybe on normal settings you can ignore them, but on marathon this is definately something you want to do ASAP, do everything you can with pd3.

The math were done with the normal receipe cost, it compared how fast a prod 3 module pay for itself placed in an assembly machine 3 vs placed in a miner drill.
If you have 1 PM3, would you place it first in an assembly doing green circuit or first in the mining drill ?

Math with standard receipe cost shows that in an assembly lvl 3 making green circuit the module 3 would generate 9X faster extra ore than placed in a mining drill.

[aka13]

The math were done with the normal receipe cost, it compared how fast a prod 3 module pay for itself placed in an assembly machine 3 vs placed in a miner drill.
If you have 1 PM3, would you place it first in an assembly doing green circuit or first in the mining drill ?

Math with standard receipe cost shows that in an assembly lvl 3 making green circuit the module 3 would generate 9X faster extra ore than placed in a mining drill.

Yeah, absolutely, if you have to choose, you stock with the highrollers first, starting with the silo, obviously.
That is undisputable.
What I am saying is, "put prod3 everywhere if you play longer".

[mmmPI]

Yeah, absolutely, if you have to choose, you stock with the highrollers first, starting with the silo, obviously.
That is undisputable.
What I am saying is, "put prod3 everywhere if you play longer".

Haa that's the second argument on the topic x) How much time will the prod3 will take to pay for itself ?

[removed]

Edit: If you place 3 PM3 in a mining drill without speed beacon, it will take a bit more than 10 hours for them to generate an extra 3600 ore which is the cost of build another 3 PM3.

It would be 6h40 if the PM3 had no speed reduction penalty.

Then it comes to comparing the cost of placing PM3 everywhere compared to instead investing the ressources into the mining productivity bonus which has different way of being represented in math i think, depending on if you account for return on investement on the shortest possible time, or if you account for raw ore given to you compared to raw ore invested, which gives different results.

[mrvn]

The math were done with the normal receipe cost, it compared how fast a prod 3 module pay for itself placed in an assembly machine 3 vs placed in a miner drill.
If you have 1 PM3, would you place it first in an assembly doing green circuit or first in the mining drill ?

Math with standard receipe cost shows that in an assembly lvl 3 making green circuit the module 3 would generate 9X faster extra ore than placed in a mining drill.

Yeah, absolutely, if you have to choose, you stock with the highrollers first, starting with the silo, obviously.
That is undisputable.
What I am saying is, "put prod3 everywhere if you play longer".

I think "If I can produce enough PD3s to cover all my manufacturing" was clear enough.

So lets everybody assume everything but the miners has productivity 3 modules. I don't know how often this has been said already, you fill from the top down where it's most beneficent. Take that as a given already.

The question now though is:

Do you keep producing productivity modules 3 to put into the miners or do you research mining bonuses?

Both will make the ore patches last longer. So what you want to optimize is the overall productivity bonus of the miner. Mining research 1+2+3 are a no brainner given how cheap they are giving you 30%. When I select "all research" in the sandbox I actually get 40% bonus, no idea where that last 10% comes from.

Then do you add 3 PM3 to each miner or mining research 4+5+6 for another 30% (up to 70%)? The answer to that depends on the number of miners you have and how long you intent to keep playing, so the unit of choice would be miner hours:

When to choose Mining research over PM3?

Level 4: 1564 - 1919 miner hours
Level 5: 2346 - 2878.5 miner hours
Level 6: 3128 - 3838 miner hours
Level 7: 3910 - 4797.5 miner hours
Level 8: 4692 - 5757 miner hours
...

If you use PM3s in miners without any beacons for speed (which is more costly but means less frequent rebuild times) then it takes 6h40m * <num miners> miner hours. If that is more than the mining research then better do the research. The longer you intent to play the higher a research makes sense. If you plan to play forever then just PM3s are never better.

[aka13]

Yeah, and I think that that is exactly the problem, we are judging a mathematical abstraction, kinda like the parallel uranium thread.
I have not lost a single prod module over the 500 hours my recent factory stands. That means, that no matter what happens, the pd module is likely to exist and be used forever.
The question is then, "will it see enough use even in the worst location to pay for itself", and the answer is yes, it will

At some point, as everything, this factory will die, or never get launched again, and the most recent "batch" of prod modules in intermediary storage will not pay for themselves, but all the other ones will.

So in fact, your PD module losses can be approximated to the number you have laying around in storage at any given point in time, since all other ones will pay for themselves in 10 hours either way.

[mmmPI]

Yeah, and I think that that is exactly the problem, we are judging a mathematical abstraction, kinda like the parallel uranium thread.
I have not lost a single prod module over the 500 hours my recent factory stands. That means, that no matter what happens, the pd module is likely to exist and be used forever.
The question is then, "will it see enough use even in the worst location to pay for itself", and the answer is yes, it will

At some point, as everything, this factory will die, or never get launched again, and the most recent "batch" of prod modules in intermediary storage will not pay for themselves, but all the other ones will.

So in fact, your PD module losses can be approximated to the number you have laying around in storage at any given point in time, since all other ones will pay for themselves in 10 hours either way.

I play without biters usually so losing PM3 is not a concern for me generally, but also expanding and getting new ore patch is easy that also tend to shift my judgment on that mathematical abstraction.


Using PM3 everywhere including in mining drill makes it easier to maintain a certain throughput of ore, which is part of the goal in maintaining a throughput of science. It's maybe not efficient in terms of ressource investment, but in marathon it would make sense to use them to slow down your ore patch depletion.


The question for you is "will it see enough time even in the worst location", but you could also see things as " it's better to spend the same amount of ressource making assembly lane and additionnal mining drill without module" . However than would mean forcing yourself to feed a machine even more hungry in ressource and increasing even more the need to build outpost. I can understand the choice of using PM3 in mining drill in marathon.


I suppose you don't use beacon in your ore patch ?

[jodokus31]

A factory, which runs forever needs a sink for the produced products.
Either it's research or modules. In the beginning, there is also the part, where the factory is growing until UPS limit.
At some point, its cheaper to produce the prod modules than the next tech of mining productivity, so might as well put the prod modules into the miners then.

BTW: If somebody wants to reduce the amount of times, to move an outpost, there is also the option to move out far from center starting point and find some huge patches with higher density. That, I would do long before putting pm3 into miners.

[mmmPI]

A factory, which runs forever needs a sink for the produced products.
Either it's research or modules. In the beginning, there is also the part, where the factory is growing until UPS limit.
At some point, its cheaper to produce the prod modules than the next tech of mining productivity, so might as well put the prod modules into the miners then.

BTW: If somebody wants to reduce the amount of times, to move an outpost, there is also the option to move out far from center starting point and find some huge patches with higher density. That, I would do long before putting pm3 into miners.

That's one way to define a turning point in what is otherwise a subjective limit. the UPS limit, or the science throughput in a way is similar, it depend on your UPS optimization.


One could then consider that UPS limit is reached, and then you maintain the factory, ( maybe your goal was to reach mining prod 500 not reaching 5K SPM) if you are in the phase "maintaining" or adopt the philosophy of that phase , then you also have a number of miners, say 100 000 mining drill.

If 1 drill is covering 100 1000 10000 100K 1M ore, it gives you a rate a which you have to replace your mining drill before they are exhausted. That does make them last longer.

If you place PM3 you reduce the rate at which 1 miner is exhausted, but you increase the total number of miners that need to be periodically replaced.

The amout of ore covered by the drill thus is an important factor, because it would tilt the balance from one to another in terms of need of human intervention.if you have 100K miners with only PM3, each productivty lvl researched is being applied to the "future harvest", that is made higher due to the cap in throughput cause by the reduction of speed from prod 3 "higher" than it would have been if no module was placed, because reducing speed by 45% would preserve much of ore to receive that bonus.

That would be another way to consider the problem based on a different metric which is "human intervention" rather than "time to pay off an investement" or "total gain in raw ore from total investement in raw ore".

[aka13]

I play without biters usually so losing PM3 is not a concern for me generally, but also expanding and getting new ore patch is easy that also tend to shift my judgment on that mathematical abstraction.


Using PM3 everywhere including in mining drill makes it easier to maintain a certain throughput of ore, which is part of the goal in maintaining a throughput of science. It's maybe not efficient in terms of ressource investment, but in marathon it would make sense to use them to slow down your ore patch depletion.


The question for you is "will it see enough time even in the worst location", but you could also see things as " it's better to spend the same amount of ressource making assembly lane and additionnal mining drill without module" . However than would mean forcing yourself to feed a machine even more hungry in ressource and increasing even more the need to build outpost. I can understand the choice of using PM3 in mining drill in marathon.


I suppose you don't use beacon in your ore patch ?

Screenshot 2022-09-08 141714.png (898.67 KiB) Viewed 2500 times

The screenshot is vanilla deathworld marathon.

Yes, exactly, that is the culprit. Building a factory is fast, fun, easy, needs power and place, but that is all. Feeding it though becomes surreal from the patch side of things. Right now, the factory runs in "standby" mode for the last 200 hours, while I expand and prepare the new 2400 spm research. And yet, I have nevertheless consumed 100 mil copper in that timeframe. The biggest patches right now contain about 30 mil, so you can imagine, how fast they will be gone as soon as I start research even in small batches.

As you see from the screenshot, I have started an expansion railway, but fighting for land is difficult and slow, even with automated biter destruction, blueprinted segments, completely autonomous outpost construction. I will propably go for 15-20 base segments to the left, in hopes that I reach deposits with 100+ mil, so I don't have to build mining outpost all the time.

[mrvn]

A factory, which runs forever needs a sink for the produced products.
Either it's research or modules. In the beginning, there is also the part, where the factory is growing until UPS limit.
At some point, its cheaper to produce the prod modules than the next tech of mining productivity, so might as well put the prod modules into the miners then.

BTW: If somebody wants to reduce the amount of times, to move an outpost, there is also the option to move out far from center starting point and find some huge patches with higher density. That, I would do long before putting pm3 into miners.

For UPS productivity modules in miners are the worst as it slows down your miner and you need more. You would actually want speed modules there so you have less miners using up less UPS. For UPS mining research beats PM3 modules too because it has no slowdown. But UPS isn't the only factor.

Ore patches deplete and then you have to move the miners. That often tops UPS, at least for me, as that costs me time I would rather spend building something else. Same goes for finding a huge/rich ore patch that is insanely far away. You have to kill too many biters to get there and that takes time. So you have to factor in limited ore patches. It differs when you have personal shields and laser defense and can just walk through nests like they are nothing. But I'm not at that stage.

Currently I'm pre-rocket because I just started a new 1.1 vanilla game. Haven't played vanilla in ages and never played with the changes since like 0.15 or so. So my only choice is productivity modules. Should I build them or race towards the rocket and damn the waste till I get mining research to match PM3s? Choices, choices, ...

[mmmPI]

Building a factory is fast, fun, easy, needs power and place, but that is all. Feeding it though becomes surreal from the patch side of things. Right now, the factory runs in "standby" mode for the last 200 hours, while I expand and prepare the new 2400 spm research. And yet, I have nevertheless consumed 100 mil copper in that timeframe. The biggest patches right now contain about 30 mil, so you can imagine, how fast they will be gone as soon as I start research even in small batches.

As you see from the screenshot, I have started an expansion railway, but fighting for land is difficult and slow, even with automated biter destruction, blueprinted segments, completely autonomous outpost construction. I will propably go for 15-20 base segments to the left, in hopes that I reach deposits with 100+ mil, so I don't have to build mining outpost all the time.

That's a good illustration of why prod modules are important x).

Looking at the screenshot it's quite clear that all the ressources patches on the right side are connected with trains, and most of those going left where you probably expanded last.

At this point given the shape of the base, probably required to defend in a deatworld, you uncover territory that contain ore patch of "mediocre" yield compared to an easier map where you don't try to minimize your border perimeter at the cost of lots of efforts and fighting.

This means what is important for you is making the most ore out of the ore that is on the map, because that's the more human intervention, getting acces to the ore, the part before you build the outpost x). The fact that you gather the ore more slowly after it's done is not important for you, you are most likely not limited by your ability to produce module but rather to expand to increase the number of mining drill runing at all time. PM3 in mining drill is a cost that you pay to get any work done last longer, each miner you place will stay for more hours.

It's similar to feeding coal instead of wood to some furnaces manually. Coal is expensive, wood is cheap/free, but if you want to fuel the biggest number of furnaces manually you prefer giving them the expensive fuel because each second of your time will produce more result.

If you build an outpost, you want it to last for the longer time in second/minutes/hours, compared to the time it take to build the oupost. The goal being having as many outpost as possible running at 1 time. You certainly don't want to dry the ore patch faster placing beacon .

Everytime the mining prod research occur it gives a boost to all the "left to harvest ore" under each miner even greater if you have PM3. the metric would be something like "raw ore per human intervention time" . Placing a PM3 considering they cost 0 in your case where you play 500 hours, is just no time cost, but will yield ore. benefit considering things this way.

[mrvn]

On a side note: Do aliens attacking passing trains damage rails? I think the spitters would, right?

Otherwise you could use a tank and buldoze through the aliens to a far away ore field, clear that area and defend it and then build powerful enough trans to not get stopped by aliens on the tracks. (And no power lines, aliens to attack those. Produce power locally at the mine.)

[mmmPI]

i don't know i have never played the game

[FuryoftheStars]

On a side note: Do aliens attacking passing trains damage rails? I think the spitters would, right?

Yes

i don't know i have never played the game

I'm assuming you meant you have never played the game with biters?

[mmmPI]

i don't know i have never played the game

I'm assuming you meant you have never played the game with biters?

I was sacartiscly refering to this sentence :

On a side note: Do aliens attacking passing trains damage rails? I think the spitters would, right?

I wonder if you ever play the game or just live in your own reality.

I'm putting you back on ignore, your reality is just to different from mine to make any discussion meaningful.

Being asked this and then seeing the same user ask the previous question is quite baffling to me.

I have indeed played the game, even with biters x) i have noticed their rail eating and spitting and just the random collision with wandering behemoth i think in 2016 or so when i started playing the game. it's pretty obvious pretty soon into the game and have a strong inpact on gameplay i don't know how someone can one not know this if playing for long time.

[FuryoftheStars]

Ah, ok.

[mmmPI]

I can understand why you'd be surprised by such statement though sorry for having you in this

[FuryoftheStars]

Yeah, sorry, the current on going discussion on module efficiency and whether or not it's useful in miners, etc I'm completely disinterested in, so I unsubbed from the thread, but I'm still half paying attention to here because the OP at one point had replied to me without actually quoting me (so I wouldn't have been notified).

Mrvn's short post was short enough that I went ahead and read it, then I saw yours, though now I'm wondering if I was taking mrvn's post out of context, too.

Eh, you all discuss whatever you want... I'm out on this thread. The discussions you all are having at this point I'm not even reading beyond the first couple of lines at this point, if that. I didn't expect the discussions to veer off into that territory, and it's not something I'm interested in talking about or even reading considering I actually don't even typically use modules. (Only times I've really used them were in test setups where I was more interested in just maximizing the output in a small footprint for something else that I was actually testing.)