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I recently killed the small worm and started mining tungsten to create metallurgic science. My research base is at Nauvis but I want to setup one on Vulcanus. I saw a cool setup for creating circuits with 8 beacons per assembler. I only have a tiny scale production of level 1 modules. Is it too early to setup beacons for this main bus? With acid neutralization, power is almost free, so that's one big point of beacons covered. But it doesn't seem worth it just putting level 1 speed modules in them.

For what it's worth, I tend to have the opposite opinion: a handful of beacons with speed 1 modules already get you most of the benefit. I need a particular reason to justify using better speed modules, such as getting more value out of an expensive target (e.g. things full of productivity modules, especially higher tier/quality ones, or higher quality buildings), because it makes the design more convenient (because some building had a throughput that was slightly too low for what I'm trying to make) or because resources are plentiful enough that it's not really worth keeping a stock of speed 1 modules around for cheaper construction costs.

Interesting. I thought the only use for beacons was cramming many speed 3 modules to make up for prod 3 modules. Meaning the speedup is not significant enough for a few speed 1 modules compared to doing an 8 beacon setup with a pair of speed 3 modules each. Although v2.0 buffed individual beacons, according to the FFF by 3x single beacon from v1.1.

qwr wrote: Wed Aug 06, 2025 3:37 am Interesting. I thought the only use for beacons was cramming many speed 3 modules to make up for prod 3 modules. Meaning the speedup is not significant enough for a few speed 1 modules compared to doing an 8 beacon setup with a pair of speed 3 modules each. Although v2.0 buffed individual beacons, according to the FFF by 3x single beacon from v1.1.

A single speed 1 beacon is actually enough to "make up for prod 3 modules" on its own: four prod 3 modules add -60% to speed, and the single beacon beacon will add +60% to speed (these stack additively), so the machine is almost already operating at full speed.

From another point of view, the beacon increases speed from 40% to 100% so you're multiplying throughput by 2.5! You need many fewer buildings -- and thus many fewer prod 3 modules -- to achieve your throughput.

But if you upgrade to use eight beacons, you only add +170% speed, so your buildings jump from 100% to 181%, merely throughput by an additional 1.81. That's still cutting it in half again, but speed 1 modules and beacons are fairly cheap in comparison, so the upgrade is still easily worth the cost.

But if you're just using prod 1 modules, they only give -20% to speed. The single speed 1 beacon is still +60% so your machine is jumping from 80% to 140% speed. So a 1.75 multiplier to throughput. The cost of the speed beacon is still going to be smaller than having to make 1.75 times as many assembler 3's and prod 1 modules if you were to go without.

I haven't really costed going ham on speed 1 modules, or exactly how effective speed 3's are in comparison, so if you want more detail you'll have to run the math yourself.