Factorio Forums

As of now, modules are quite inbalanced, in particular Productivity & Efficiency Modules 3.

For Efficiency Modules:
As probably most people at some point realized, Efficiency Modules are your no-brainer-solution to efficience. They are cheap, they are ridiculously powerful, have no drawbacks, and their Tier 3 serves no purpose at all.


For Productivity Modules:
While their price seems almost fair, I'd be glad if their price would further increase in terms of copper, and in their stead decrease in terms of iron. Even though it's not completely bad, I'm still having second thoughts whenever I'm seeing the whopping 1000 iron plates that are needed for Tier 3 Productivity Modules, meaning that even if you (as generally should be the case) got excess copper, mustering up the iron can be a challenge all by itself in resource-starved scenarios (even though these should be their strong-point).

Furthermore, the insane energy costs of a whole setup that takes no compromise on Production Speed are pretty hard on players that are fighting off a lack of coal & oil (I'm not even going into solar modules). In these scenarios, the magical conversion from energy to matter hinders the pay-off, if not completely overrides it.


Speed Modules:
They are pretty much doing what's in their job description: Fasten up a production, so a smaller set-up gets the same results, even though on the cost of energy. The only thing that's bugging me here, and that is probably a side note, that the benefit of T3 over T2 in this case should be increased production speed rather than increased energy-efficiency.


But back to Productivity Modules:
As already mentioned, I'd like to shift their resource focus further to copper, and away from iron. This is based on the assumption, which I think is solid, that iron sees way heavier expenditure than copper. As such, excess copper is rather easy to find, and the main cost of modules therefore is the iron, which might even force the player to wage a war against the biters for it, or cut off iron production somewhere else.

The energy problematic should be handled through the changes towards Efficiency Modules.


Efficiency Modules:
The most obvious way of nerfing Efficiency Modules would be increasing the minimum power consumption of buildings. While 20% sounds quite utopian, it ... well, is utopian. Even if such a threshold would be possible, there'd have to be a mechanic promoting Tier 3 Efficiency Modules.
The main balance points of Efficiency Modules are:
1) The minimum threshold of energy consumption
- with special focus on Assembling Machines, Electric Furnaces and Pumpjacks
(especially in combination with Productivity/Speed)
2) The energy cost of beacons that is irreducible
- The number of intern Module slots per building
(e.g. 2 for all the oil stuff, Electric Furnaces and T2-Assembling Machines)
3) The low effect range and high space consumption of Beacons



My balancing approach therefore:

Efficiency modules' effects should be made multiplicative, so that it reduces the energy consumption after all other buffs have been applied, and the values of Efficiency 1, 2 and 3 adjusted to 10%, 30% and 50%. That way, two T2 Modules reach 0.7² = 0.49, and by that the threshold for most buildings without beacons, but so would just one T3 module.
So, if you feel like it, even 25% would be possible with two T3 Modules. Now, since Efficiency Modules work multiplicative, so does the minimum threshold , so that it becomes 20% of what the power consumption would be without the modules, and I think we're arriving at a pretty good compromise for both single use in regular facilities as in designated use in hybrid systems.

If that shouldn't be enough to regulate efficiency by ressource price, there'd be the additional (and sensible) approach of punishing any sort of hold-up. An efficient factory is a factory in which every part has its place, and everything runs smooth and steady. Any kind of hold-up is a sin, it forces the whole factory to come to a grinding halt, and it takes time to get back to its peak efficiency. So the alternative balancing approach would be to increase the energy consumption during the warming up (and idle?), and only decreasing the energy consumption during orderly functioning.


A last word towards the combination of Efficiency, Productivity and Speed. While it is true that the proposed changes radically improve the efficiency of hybrid systems, I don't see the sin in it. First, there is the fundamental restriction in combination of Modules that comes by slots & space. If you're really intent on grinding up a single factory, I think with 4 intern slots and 12 Beacons you reach the maximum possible. But a design like this has its own disadvantages:
First, and overall, it looks incredibly ugly, so I'd be surprised seeing people ever preferring this method.
Second, it only is an alternative setup to an array of Assembling Machines, and comes with its own trials.
Third, Productivity Modules are still limited to intern Module slots, so any fairy tales of ever-producing ores will most definitely stay fairy tales.

Productivity modules pay off depending on how many raw resources they process. They're insanely valuable for building the rocket, easily paying off their trouble and then some, and mostly useless for mining, taking longer than your typical full game to pay off.

Edit: The only real reason productivity modules are so awesome is because beacons exist. Without the ability to negate the speed penalty, they would be pretty lousy in most scenarios.

Yes, of cause the pay-off time is dependant by the processed ressources per time, and as such the rocket is a predestined use of productivity modules. However, any production path, that is not limited, is a valid target of Productivity Modules, and that's the problem. For example you can use Productivity Modules on Electric Furnaces if you're willing to build either more Electric Furnaces, or if you incorporate Speed Modules per beacon. Same goes for anything Assembling Machines create, and as well for resources themselves. The payoff might take time, but if you go the whole path from Resource to e.g. Steel/Gears/Copper wire and fill it all with Productivity Modules, you get effectively the double per resource.

Of cause, if ultimately, the game is over before the module is paid off, the resources are still wasted. However, if you're storing copper from an early point in the game within chests, the copper invested is, as I mentioned before, excess copper, that is missing nowhere. So, if you only calculate in iron, and maybe plastic, the time to pay-off is substantially reduced. Add speed beacons, and you can very well get under an hour, e.g. for properly designed gear assembling machines with speed beacons it's around 20 minutes till you got your iron back, and a little more than a full hour till it has totally paid off in terms of items consumed/items created.

Unluckily though for resource-starved scenarios, T3 modules are a heavy investment, and the Beacon approach is still gated by energy. So, if you're missing energy, Productivity goes out the window.

And as such, the idea behind for the change is this:
Make it possible to replace energy investment by resource investment,
and make it possible to replace resource investment by energy investment.
Finally, further shift the costs to excess resources away from core resources.

Personally I don't like speed modules. It's not like you're particularly strapped for space (unless doing self-imposed challenges) and the drop in energy efficiency is greater than the rise in speed. There should rarely be anything stopping you from expansion to combat the speed decrease.

As for productivity modules, you're right most factories would have no use for them in assemblers. Chemical Plants and Refineries are another story. All my oil stuff is full of Productivity modules for endgame. I mean, if you look at making a battery, Oil > Petroleum > Sulphur > Sulphuric Acid > Battery, where each of those processes (represented by a >) has 20% productivity, you get 107.36% more batteries per unit of Petroleum, and that's not even including cracking or beacons.

But modules in general are more of a specialised thing and I don't mind keeping it that way. Your base factory has a particular rate it works at, and modules just help certain parts of it get by a bit more smoothly, they aren't supposed to be used everywhere.

Though I agree efficiency modules should be looked at... Almost no point putting them in beacons which does make the T3 module nothing more than a component for Power Armour. However your idea of stacking them multiplicatively might not be ideal when you consider two T3 modules basically negate even high speed energy costs. Also have you tried putting T2 efficiency modules in all your furnaces? It's arduous and expensive but balances the result I think. Further reducing the effect might make efficiency modules worthless as I don't feel like putting T3 modules in some 600 furnaces. That would be, what, 1,200,000 iron? And twice as much copper, not to mention the oil costs. Would probably still use T2 but it will be using 2.5x as much energy as now. Meh.

You may have guessed I'm not a big user of modules but I'd suggest increasing the T3 Efficiency module to 100% instead. That way with two modules you can get 300% inefficiency (+ % energy consumption) before breaking even and going up substantially from there, rather than 400% inefficiency and going up very slowly. It's not a big difference when dealing with the base game but mods offering bigger beacons or more module slots would then be better balanced.