Speed modules are sometimes more efficient than Efficiencies

[bobucles]

Let's be honest here. Do those fractional changes in energy consumption and pollution output REALLY matter? Consider that we're talking about the full module3 post game. Biter evolution is already near max (95%+) and it takes hundreds or thousands of pollution production to see an attack wave difference of ONE biter. Is one more biter every half hour going to change your game? I doubt it.

If your response is "I want to minimize pollution" I'm going to stop you right there. Productivity modules ALSO reduce total pollution. Don't believe me? Fill the rocket silo with prod3 modules. You now only need 71/100 rocket parts to build the rocket. That's a 30% pollution reduction for your ENTIRE rocket factory, from the mining, to the smelting, to the processing and final rocket launch. Any extra pollution production at the silo itself amounts to a rounding error when compared to your entire factory, right? Even that dirty blemish can be easily washed away with eff3 beacons. Now add prod3 modules into your labs. Your entire science base + mining operations now produce 17% less pollution. Even the total energy demand of your factory gets reduced, with the silo + labs standing above as the shining peak of energy demand to bind them all together.

So you might want to change the topic to "Productivity modules are sometimes more efficient than efficiencies" because that's completely true!

I'm too busy right now to run through every single iteration of every single module at every step of the process. I don't think it's worth the time but maybe a math nerd might get hooked. Calculating the pollution reduction of productivity modules is very similar to finding the total value of a prod3 in the first place. It's all about the total resources and free production that happens through the assembler. The more free resources and dirty production steps that get cut out of the process, the better it is.

[Aeternus]

Bobucles understands the value of free production

Totally right of course. The more steps left down the chain to the base resource, the more valuable production modules become in terms of energy savings. Which resigns efficiency modules to edge cases:
- Early bases where power production is problematic or where biter evolution/attacks are still a concern.
- Basic resource conversion. Oil refineries and Electric Smelters don't have steps below them, so production modules in these are the least effective for energy savings, and these structures have high energy requirements.
- Structures that can't handle production mods but do produce continuously. Think pipes, concrete, rail, electric mine and electric furnace assemblers for research. Can't use productivity there, so why not toss in 1x speed3, 3x eff3?
- Structures where maximizing production is not the goal. Heavy -> light oil conversion for instance, or Heavy oil -> Lube. But even those still benefit from production modules.
- Mines, especially at endgame when the mining productivity research bonus causes a single mine without speedbuffs to compress a blue belt already (Happens around the 800 research mark). Productivity modules become pointless long before, speedmods not shortly afterward. So why not drop in 3 Eff-1's? Not much else you can do with those short of not adding modules entirely... Or early game, where your electrical mines tend to be the bulk of your power demand. 3x Eff1 is cheap and also reduces your mining outpost pollution a lot.

[bobucles]

Mines, especially at endgame

Upgrading mines earlier in the game will dramatically reduce your total pollution because the mines themselves are filthy. The energy savings isn't quite competitive against solar panels (27kW savings vs. 42kW for a panel) but the pollution reduction is top rate. I have done full Eff1 games and they are basically easy mode.

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 (3.1/sec for miner+eff1+ coal steam savings) 
(2.37/sec for assembler2+eff1 + coal steam savings ) 
(.65/sec dirty steam savings per solar panel) 

Int terms of reducing biter aggro it is a fairly nice thing to consider.

[lottery248]

will this be a reason efficiency module is underpowered? i think this case will still need a lot of first tier module, but very useful when you are building a mega base, which produces numbers of such modules, making efficiency in most of the intermediate production useless. especially in peaceful mode which pollution ar not gonna trigger any attack from enemies.
what about raising the energy reduction to 80% for tier 3?

[bobucles]

what about raising the energy reduction to 80% for tier 3?

It would not be very useful I'm afraid. Players are always looking for some measurement of VALUE out of a module:
- energy savings
- Ammo savings
- extra production

Ultimately it all boils down to 1 value: Resources.

Efficiency 1 modules have decent value early game because it reduces your expenses in terms of coal power and red ammo. That ultimately gives you more resources during a phase of the game where ammo and coal are both very expensive and very valuable. But as the game goes on the cost of ammo and energy production goes down. Flame throwers are efficient, solar panels gain utility over time, and laser turrets cut ammo costs out of the equation entirely. Efficiency modules save ammo by reducing biter attacks and energy production, but that doesn't give you any value if your energy and ammo are already FREE. Eventually any resource value from an efficiency module becomes so minuscule and irrelevant that it doesn't matter, and no amount of reasonable eff3 power will ever make them work.

Prod1 multiplies existing resources into more resources. Eventually the module will pay for the cost of itself and now you have more money in the bank. They are amazing.

Speed modules are not terribly efficient on their own because it is almost always cheaper to build more vanilla assemblers. Their value comes into play by multiplying the value of productivity modules. The math on this has been done over and over but the simple discussion is this: Modules are expensive. Tier 3 modules are SUPER expensive. They are the most expensive part of building a prod3 base. But if you use a speed beacon, you can save yourself the colossal expense of filling gigantic walls of prod3 assemblers. For example:

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Let's take 8 assemblers with prod3 modules. They produce at 100-60 => 40% speed each. The total production speed is 320% or 3.2 assemblers.

I add in one T3 speed beacon. It's pretty easy to cover 8 assemblers with 1 beacon, just place the beacon in between two rows of assemblers.

Those 8 assemblers now produce at 40+50 => 90% speed. I now have 90x8 => 720% production speed, or 7.2 assemblers.

I could also get 720% assembly speed with out using speed beacons. I would need 720% / 40% per machine => 18 prod3 asssemblers 

I gained 10 assemblers worth of production for the cost of a single speed3 beacon. For the cost of 2 speed3s and 1 beacon, I gained the same bonus as if I had placed 40 prod3 modules into 10 more assemblers! THAT'S the value of speed modules.
TLDR:
Efficiency modules save you resources reducing fuel consumption and ammo consumption.
Productivity modules save you resources by multiplying resources.
Speed modules save you resources by dramatically reducing the cost of productivity modules.

[lottery248]

what about raising the energy reduction to 80% for tier 3?

It would not be very useful I'm afraid. Players are always looking for some measurement of VALUE out of a module:
- energy savings
- Ammo savings
- extra production

Ultimately it all boils down to 1 value: Resources.

Efficiency 1 modules have decent value early game because it reduces your expenses in terms of coal power and red ammo. That ultimately gives you more resources during a phase of the game where ammo and coal are both very expensive and very valuable. But as the game goes on the cost of ammo and energy production goes down. Flame throwers are efficient, solar panels gain utility over time, and laser turrets cut ammo costs out of the equation entirely. Efficiency modules save ammo by reducing biter attacks and energy production, but that doesn't give you any value if your energy and ammo are already FREE. Eventually any resource value from an efficiency module becomes so minuscule and irrelevant that it doesn't matter, and no amount of reasonable eff3 power will ever make them work.

Prod1 multiplies existing resources into more resources. Eventually the module will pay for the cost of itself and now you have more money in the bank. They are amazing.

Speed modules are not terribly efficient on their own because it is almost always cheaper to build more vanilla assemblers. Their value comes into play by multiplying the value of productivity modules. The math on this has been done over and over but the simple discussion is this: Modules are expensive. Tier 3 modules are SUPER expensive. They are the most expensive part of building a prod3 base. But if you use a speed beacon, you can save yourself the colossal expense of filling gigantic walls of prod3 assemblers. For example:

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Let's take 8 assemblers with prod3 modules. They produce at 100-60 => 40% speed each. The total production speed is 320% or 3.2 assemblers.

I add in one T3 speed beacon. It's pretty easy to cover 8 assemblers with 1 beacon, just place the beacon in between two rows of assemblers.

Those 8 assemblers now produce at 40+50 => 90% speed. I now have 90x8 => 720% production speed, or 7.2 assemblers.

I could also get 720% assembly speed with out using speed beacons. I would need 720% / 40% per machine => 18 prod3 asssemblers 

I gained 10 assemblers worth of production for the cost of a single speed3 beacon. For the cost of 2 speed3s and 1 beacon, I gained the same bonus as if I had placed 40 prod3 modules into 10 more assemblers! THAT'S the value of speed modules.
TLDR:
Efficiency modules save you resources reducing fuel consumption and ammo consumption.
Productivity modules save you resources by multiplying resources.
Speed modules save you resources by dramatically reducing the cost of productivity modules.

wow! amazing math!
but the problem is, how can we use belts to connect those assemblers covering a beacon?
however, no matter how expensive it is, late game = they are basically freebie

[bobingabout]

but the problem is, how can we use belts to connect those assemblers covering a beacon?

Don't. Use Logistic robots.

[Hedning1390]

I think it is fine to have one module which is not on equal terms with the other two. They are not completely useless because some recipes can't be crafted with productivity modules.

[dpacbach]

Here is something that seems important that I have not seen mentioned in this thread yet:

Productivity modules have a basic difference from efficiency and speed modules that in a sense makes them more powerful than either of those two. That is, the effects of productivity modules can accumulate multiplicatively (exponentially) across a supply chain.

For example, say we have 5 items that each take the same amount of time to craft: A, B, C, D, E. A requires 5 B's to produce, B requires 5 C's to produce, and so on. Ultimately, A requires 5*5*5*5 = 625 E's to produce. If we now add a speed3 module to all factories involved in this process (of producing A's, B's, C's, etc.) then it will speed up the overall process by 50%, i.e., the overall speedup is the same as the amount by which each individual factory is sped up.

However, if we were to add a prod3 module to each factory in this process then we would only require 90% of B's compared with before, 90%*90%=81% of C's, and so on, resulting in only needing 0.9^4 = 66% of E's (which are the "resources" in this case). Actually, if we consider E's to be the "resources" mined by miners containing also a prod3 module, we can add one more step to this and say 0.9^5 = 59%. In other words, the amount of resources needed has been reduced by a percentage which is much greater than the 10% of the prod3 module.

So therefore, if you use four (or as many as possible) prod3 modules at every level in e.g. your science factory all the way starting from mining up to science labs, you can save significant numbers of resources. In fact my calculations show that, in this case, copper-mine size requirements are reduced by 83% (!!) in the supply chain leading up to yellow research (which is one step beyond the step of producing yellow science bottles).

So to summarize: productivity modules have a kind of power not had by the other kinds of modules in that their effects accumulate exponentially across the supply chain, whereas speed and efficiency modules do not have this property.

[bobingabout]

So to summarize: productivity modules have a kind of power not had by the other kinds of modules in that their effects accumulate exponentially across the supply chain, whereas speed and efficiency modules do not have this property.

A lot of people seem to forget that, I don't, which is why I find the -10% speed for +4% productivity worth doing. Sure you actually slow down the factory, but you gain by using less resources... so if you were to build the same number of assembling machines over the whole process, you can compensate by building more E stage, because you need fewer A stage, so it doesn't end up looking like an upside down pyramid (3D pyramid), so since your factory ratios have changed, you can actually make things faster simply by changing what each factory produces.

[adam_bise]

I wonder if the modules should be re-worked. Here is an idea:

Remove efficiency module.

Speed modules increase power consumption, increase resource cost, increase pollution, decrease speed. From an realistic standpoint, this is like running a machine hot to make it faster, but costing more power, wasting more resources (parts move materials faster and break more often increasing waste), and generating more pollution.

Productivity module renamed to Efficiency module and changed to: Reduce power consumption, reduce resource cost, reduce pollution, and increase speed. I.E running the machine cooler, taking more time to make use of more of the input material, slow process = less chance of breaking something and wasting material.

Remove beacons: Beacons never did make any sense to me. How do you transmit a savings in resources again? The same way you download a ham sandwich right? It seems like a patchwork fix for the UPS loss of running hundreds of assemblers.

Also, multiple modules of the same type multiplies their effects instead of adding them.

[Hiladdar]

By the time I start using modules in large numbers, in the games I play, about the only thing I use efficiency module is it is a component needed for making something like armor.

At this stage if the game, power is not an issue. I have more then enough solar and nuclear power.

Currently there are several items that use speed modules as a sub-component like RCU and gold science. How about replacing one of those with EFF1s. In a way it does make sense for a something shot up into space to be efficient in terms of weight and energy usage.