Why does Beacon require Blue circuit research when they are not used to craft it?

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Plantagen
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Why does Beacon require Blue circuit research when they are not used to craft it?

Post by Plantagen »

Almost everything in Factorio has a logical research order, and you need to research every part needed to craft X before you can research X. This makes sense.

I noticed today that Beacons are the exception (perhaps there are a few more, but not many).

Beacons require blue chips research, but they do not require blue chips to craft. Why then do we need to research blue chips first?
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boskid
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Re: Why does Beacon require Blue circuit research when they are not used to craft it?

Post by boskid »

I tried to find an answer but archeology leads towards a change 13 years ago around game version 0.6.0 when a technology for basic-beacon was added, at that point it had dependencies set to {"modules", "advanced-electronics-2"} and later "advanced-electronics-2" was renamed into "processing-unit". So no constructive answers, it was like that virtually forever.
astroshak
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Re: Why does Beacon require Blue circuit research when they are not used to craft it?

Post by astroshak »

Perhaps because blue chips are needed for tier 2 and 3 modules?

Using a beacon for tier 1 modules seems a very expensive proposition for such a small gain.
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