pedter wrote:Eff.2 are a waste of resources (eff.3 are even worse); build more solar instead
I did not add them to save power, but to reduce pollution. (I did mention the -80% power bonus, but you have to realize power is one of the components of pollution - reducing power directly reduces pollution by the same amount.)
Beacons burn more power than they save when fitted with eff. modules unless you're hitting a huge number of offenders; build more solar instead
I didn't build them to save power, I built them to reduce pollution - as I stated in my post. (Note that I said "biggest polluters", not "biggest energy hogs".)
Assembler 3's and other loads are now overloading everything
I don't really think of it as "overloading". Switching to assembler 3s, along with decreasing power and pollution, increases throughput, and those are all
good things. That increased throughput potentially changes where a factory's bottleneck is, just like switching to a faster belt increases that belt's throughput, potentially making it not be the bottleneck anymore. (But as stated, that didn't even happen here - the bottleneck was
already the single copper plates belt trying to feed 15 copper wire factories.) Increasing the available throughput of something
can't "overload" something else unless the thing you just increased the available throughput of was itself
already "overloaded". (If it wasn't, then increasing its available throughput would not increase its demand at all.)
62MW of defense lasers exist for a reason; ignore pollution unless you've nothing better to use than eff.1
I bet the power companies in the US wish they could just use lasers instead of scrubbers and more expensive low-sulfur coal.
Telling me to "ignore pollution" is probably like telling you to "ignore how many resources I spend". (Throughput, pollution and productivity are the main things I like to improve. I also tend to play "the long game", spending some resources now to provide factory improvements that continue to provide benefits into the future.)
Cycle a train between an existing stop and the new one to share the load
You could do that. I chose not to (and was thinking it would be brought online when one of the others was exhausted or when more train drop-offs were added). It depends on how you prefer to manage the consumption of the copper fields. But from what I saw that scheme wouldn't improve throughput of the whole system as it would still be bottlenecked on the factory (and after that the train). Copper ore wasn't an issue, except for the couple of times I managed to block the trains.
And if it were an issue, multiplexing one train probably wouldn't help - you'd need more trains. My real reason for getting the copper field ready to go was that I was aware of the fact that I sucked up a bit of copper making modules and I didn't want to make a lot of extra work for whoever else played the map after me so I got more copper ready to go.
Factory using prod.3 with speed3 beacons.
Oh my. Will there be hazmat suits available? That's going to be a
lot of pollution.
Except for pump jacks, I generally don't see the point of going crazy with speed modules - just make your factory modular and then use construction bots to expand capacity at will. You can then achieve the same throughput* using less power, less pollution, and probably a similar number of resources spent (using speed modules saves needing more productivity modules for more instances, but costs in terms of speed modules/beacons/power since you only get 1/2 effect from beacon modules). Of course, when I use productivity modules (which increase pollution) I also use beacons with efficiency modules to get the pollution back down (and maybe add the odd speed module if I'm already hitting -80% power and have some beacon capacity to spare).
That said, speed modules aren't as bad as they might seem on a pollution-per-item basis because even if it increases power (and therefore pollution) by 70%, the 50% speed bonus means less time spent working (generating pollution) for each item, so the speed partially cancels out the pollution increase. But still, beacon slots used for speed modules are beacon slots
not used for efficiency modules.
(You can actually get pollution to less than the normal -80% power level by using a combination of efficiency and speed modules, maintaining the -80% power bonus while cranking the speed up a bit.)
*: Actually you may get much better throughput by replication rather than speed modules, because speed modules don't improve the throughput of belts or inserters whereas replication can. With replication, sticking to the cheapest transport belt can even be a viable option.
Does anyone know how long this map will be allowed to continue running? (When he updates to 12.17 will the map be upgraded or reset?)
Maybe I won't do it here since we seem to be at cross-purposes, but I think I might be inspired to try playing a more resource rich (relative to biters anyways) map in SP and make a giganto/modular high-throughput factory.
