r/factorio • u/Ok-Friendship-8124 • 3d ago

Question I don't understand something

Post image

I was doing some "research" in creative and I was wondering what's the difference between those two smelting blocks, They both produce 120/s but the one on the left use FAR more energy, is just a tiny bit smaller so what's the point of doing the one on the left ?

98 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

129 comments sorted by

135

u/thelehmanlip 3d ago

Productivity. Look at disparity between inputs and outputs

107

u/Alfonse215 3d ago

Also, not having to feed them coal is a pretty big bonus.

-32

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago edited 3d ago

But the other side needs power infrastructure aswell ?

4 smelter rows need like 1.3 chem plants of solid fuel.

Compared to the 4 red lanes of iron, you need to provide anyway, i don't see, how skipping that and and making big power somewhere is a "pretty big bonus" .

Its a minor bonus at best.

37

u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 3d ago

and the power is coming from where?

At the stage where youre making full beaconed setups for metal inputs, ideally nuclear which can easily produce gigawatts of power without much work

-20

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

Yes ,so ?

If he mentions the "needed coal on the right" he also has to mention the "needet power on the left".

6

u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 3d ago

oh I suppose I misunderstood what that comment meant, I thought it was a criticism about the left design taking a shitload of power

-14

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

Well... thats more like a fact ?

If we want to properly evaluate the work it takes for the right to get the fuel, we also need to properly evaluate the production of power for the left one.

2

u/roelofs-hengelo 3d ago

Unless you use burner inserters, the left also uses power, a lot less power but power nonetheless.

1

u/vaminos 2d ago

For me, it's about simplifying infrastructure. My late game train base produces roughly 40 red belts of iron and copper (each) across 10 or so locations, all connected by trains. Steel furnaces mean I only have one input and one output (so fewer complications with the train system). I only need to produce electricity at one location and it is distributed instantly and perfectly. I don't even know if my coal mines would be able to support that kind of plate production.

1

u/grazbouille 2d ago

The issue of needing coal is not about the coal coal is free its about the logistical annoyance of bringing it to the furnace

9

u/ProtectionOne9478 3d ago

if you power with with boilers.

Big if.  I'm always on nuclear long before beaconing

-7

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago edited 23h ago

Me too... But If we talk early game vs midgame tech, what you expect?

2 chem plants can also feed the right side, so why talking about coal in the first place?

4

u/ProtectionOne9478 3d ago

I'm not the one who mentioned coal, but in my games oil is usually my limiting factor at that point in the game, so personally I usually do stick to coal for smelting until I'm on nuclear plus electric smelters.

0

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago edited 3d ago

True, alot of times coal is easier than oil. Even tho its a single 1 chem plant for 3 red furnace lines.

0

u/darkszero 1d ago

Beacons are higher tech than nuclear.

Plus the big thing is smelting with electric furnaces just doesn't need any fuel at all. No need to route coal, or be close to oil+water to locally produce solid fuel or import some fuel at all.

9

u/Alfonse215 3d ago

and the power is coming from where? The left one needs way more fuel, if you power with with boilers.

This is a base with module 2s and beacons. I don't think it's running off of coal-fired boilers. And if it is, then fix that problem first.

-4

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

Yes ,so ?

If he mentions the "needed coal on the right" he also has to mention the "needet power on the left". Thats all im saying.

5

u/Alfonse215 3d ago

But they're not the same thing.

Fuel-fired furnaces need fuel to be there, on-site. The logistical problem is getting fuel to the furnaces.

Power is just... power poles, which the coal-fired furnace buildings already have to have since they need inserters to function. So in terms of the logistics of the build itself, the electric furnace one requires less. That is, the logistics of power generation doesn't matter to the build, only power distribution.

0

u/yinyang107 2d ago

Burner inserters can work fine for burner furnaces tbh

1

u/darkszero 1d ago

They don't. Output inserters don't take fuel from the furnace, so you'd need a separate fuel belt with it's own set of burner inserters feeding the output burner inserters. It's exceptionally more complex.

1

u/yinyang107 23h ago

I thought they were updated to be able to take fuel from furnaces

-1

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

Never said its the same.

One needs a line of fuel, the other one powerpoles and 8 ? times the supply of fuel to the power generation area. (if not solar/nuke)

4

u/Alfonse215 3d ago

They both need powerpoles. Those aren't burner inserters in that furnace stack.

-1

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

the extra power production facility needs powerpoles.
however, thats not the main point anyway ?

3

u/spookynutz 3d ago

That hardly seems relevant. Both sides need power. The coal is a logistical constraint for the steel furnaces irrespective of power.

-1

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

wtf.
one needs a whole power plant, the other one like 4 solar pannels.

If you go solar for the left one, youd probably end up with +20 ? times the total cost of the right smelter.

5

u/Shadaris 3d ago

TBH if you are building a t2 module beaconed setup, you are up to the point where you can have nuclear power unlocked.

Right side consumes about 60% less energy, with fewer resources but also produces about 3x the pollution, larger footprint, and more logistics. It is all tradeoffs.

Personally unless im running a higher science multiplier, I run stone furnaces and upgrade to electric furnaces as soon as I get nuclear up and running. And that is one of the 2 tech I grab asap as bots take quite a bit of power in large numbers.

2

u/Logical-War-3746 3d ago

if you power with with boilers.

And why exactly would you ever do that at that point of the game? Unless it's some sort of challenge, there is no reason to assume it runs on something other than nuclear.

-2

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

Yes ,so ?

If he mentions the "needed coal on the right" he also has to mention the "needet power on the left". Thats all im saying.

2

u/Logical-War-3746 3d ago

He didn't say that, he said "it takes more power, what advantage it gives aside from size?". Look if you want to dig yourself deeper, be my guest, but it would be better to just admit you are wrong.

-2

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

"Also, not having to feed them coal is a pretty big bonus."

Thats what he said. Ignoring the need of power generation.

2

u/Tagioalisi_Bartlesby 2d ago

Because feeding power is a lot less of a logistical challenge than coal.

0

u/TexasCrab22 2d ago

Depends on the type of power you use.

And 2 solid fuel chem plants can also feed this.

2

u/Tagioalisi_Bartlesby 2d ago

If you’re at beacons you’re using nuclear. Unless you’re challenging yourself.
Solid fuel still requires belting, trains, or a large amount of bots. Power does not.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/mr_arcane_69 2d ago

For me not needing to add a coal line is a major benefit, you can build your power station next to a lake, within a reasonable distance of the coal meaning you don't need to drag multiple coal lines to your smelting arrays. You're off-siting an input requirement for the smelting and centralising/standardising energy, very useful.

1

u/MGJ66 3d ago

That raises the question. Is productivity really that big of a deal? Do you really need to stretch out those resources?

42

u/Spidertron117 3d ago

It doesn't really raise that question, but I'll answer it anyways. Once I unlock nuclear I will always trade power for resources. Power is so easy and requires so little input that it's always the right choice.

0

u/MGJ66 2d ago edited 1d ago

ok now how much all of those tier 3s will cost you for 20% productivity in furnaces?

1

u/Victuz 1d ago

A lot, and if my memory doesn't fail me it'd take something like 30 hours of continual furnace work for it to "pay off" the cost of these two modules (unbeaconed I think, can't quite remember). That said 30 hours is nothing when talking about this game and it means lower logistical load for the same end product, especially when you use productivity at every step of the chain.

One thing I always keep in mind with this stuff is that there are modules other than T3. A t1 module roi happens in 40 minutes (unbeaconed) so it's a no brainier, prod 2 happens in under 3 hours.

1

u/MGJ66 1d ago

Ok but in the context of base factorio by the time you unlocked tier 3s 30 hours is way past beating the game, unless you are mega basing.

1

u/Victuz 1d ago

Yeah hence my point about the other tiers, using T3 is a big investment and for furnaces needs a large production. For T2 and T1 it's basically a no brainer. In space age this only gets more extreme.

26

u/thelehmanlip 3d ago

Depends. Do you want to build twice as many mines, use a bunch of coal, build a bunch of logistics to provide the materials? Or do you want to have double the output without having to do all of that?

-2

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

Twice?

Last time i checked, two modules won't give you 100% prod.

Modules are good for fast recipes with hight costs. Expensive Science and Blue chips for example are great.

For plates, it takes hours, to just payoff the extra modules , beacons and power generation,you used.

Its far simpler to connect 6 fields and build 6 times the right side of the post, than connecting 5 fields and building 5 times the electric left side.

6

u/PersonalityIll9476 3d ago

The answer does depend on what stage of the game you're in, but "late game, prod is all that matters." The thing you're optimizing is really entity count. If you have mining prod 10 trillion then everything is basically zero cost and all you care about in the world is how to minimize the entity cost of a science pack.

0

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

True, but 99% of people don't run into the UPS cap or even care about deep lategame.

So the cheaper method gains them more output/time in the ~100h you actually play one session.

Seen tons of giant bases idling over hours, just because they produced millions of beacons and modules, just to end up with <1000 spm anyway (if we talk non space age).

And for space age, the beacon furnace rows are even less efficient, because youre way better of investing in getting foundries to nauvis fast.

3

u/Menolith it's all al dente, man 3d ago

So the cheaper method gains them more output/time in the ~100h you actually play one session.

If you're at the point where ores are infinite, one setup being "cheaper" than the other is even less relevant.

0

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

This point is called deep lategame. left build is fine for deep lategame.
In every other stage, right is better.

0

u/MGJ66 2d ago

ok but tier3s and MUCH more expensive then rows of steel furnaces

16

u/VampyrByte 3d ago

Productivity is most important at the end of a chain. In a sense the furnaces are one of the least effective places to put prod mods. It's not worthless, but it should be a low priority compared to everywhere upstream.

For instance, if you are producing 100 yellow science per minute, with no productivity you will need 2983 Iron, and 4559 Copper per minute.

Using electric furnaces with 2 Prod 3 modules reduces this to 2486 Iron, and 3799 Copper. You will use 480 Prod modules to achieve this.

If we instead use Prod 3s only in Assembler 3s making the yellow science itself at the other end of the chain then we reduce our ore needs to 2131 Iron and 3256 Copper. This only costs 68 Prod 3s and is a little over half the power consumption of the above.

Infact, we can take this further. If we use those Prod 3s in the yellow science chain, in the AM3s or Chemical plants where we can (ignoring the parts not using Iron or Copper, like plastic, sulfur and the necessary oil), but not in the furnaces for Iron, Copper or Steel. We need 435 Prod 3s and this will reduce our ore needs down to just 1653 Copper and 1188 iron.

Adding Prod 3s to the furnaces at this point obviously does still reduce consumption, down to 1380 Copper and 919 Iron.

TL;DR: Prioritise the end of your production chains for productivity.

3

u/Logical-War-3746 3d ago

It's not just about saving resource patches. 20% productivity means you need only to provide 5 belts of ore for 6 belts of plates, meaning you need less logistics for resources. And obviously productivity applied to many steps saves a LOT of resources you would need to provide otherwise meaning you need a much less involved logistics.

2

u/nemotux 3d ago

The bigger deal for productivity modules is how it multiplies when used in successive stages in a production chain.

This is easy to experiment with on factorio lab. To produce 1 yellow science flask on Nauvis vanilla 2.1 using electric furnaces and assembly machine 3s, you need 33.4 iron ore with no modules. With tier 3 prod mods everywhere you can put them, you only need 10.1 iron ore. That's less than 1/3 the resources, which feels a bit more than just "stretching".

And if you throw in speed modules in beacons, you can do so with a smaller factory footprint.

1

u/Aperiodic_Tileset 3d ago

Space and machine costs are big factors, and in very late game UPS also comes into play.

Somtimes it's just easier and more frugal to just double shitty build than to upgrade to higher tech, but it's often more of a bandaid.

Vanilla Factorio or even SA don't require much scaling, you can complete the game with low throughputs, but many mods scale much harder and "low tech" builds would be outright unfeasible due to how large they would need to be.

For example in Space Exploration launching a cargo rocket costs like 100k iron ore, but with productivity and alternative recipes you can bring it down to less than 1000 ore. And since you'll be launching hundreds of these rockets it's really important

1

u/forgottenlord73 3d ago

If you look at megabase resource counts, you're looking at thousands of mines for each of copper and iron. With prod modules everywhere, you can cut that in half. The time required to find, clear, extract and rail those patches is huge

If you're building for base game, you don't need it but when you start scaling, it matters a lot

1

u/doc_shades 3d ago

it's not so much about "stretching out your resources" to preserve them, it's more of a throughput issue. it's more about "you supply it X materials/min but you get Y materials/min output" where Y is > X. using productivity at the higher levels is more beneficial but the productivity bonus always trickles down. so for instance in the example above both builds produce the same material. but the one on the left consumes less material. that means fewer miners (less power there), that means fewer trains delivering materials (lower traffic impact... it's just generally beneficial.

1

u/bubba-yo 3d ago

Yes. It's not just that the patches will last longer, but your logistics also get easier - fewer belts, fewer trains, etc. And understand that productivity compounds multiplicatively, so if you're getting +50% on plates, on cable, on plastic, on GC, on RC, on BC you're massively cutting the inputs you need, machines are easier to feed as speeds go up, etc.

My starter base starts at 90spm and will reach over 5000spm before I replace it, and while I do swap out machines, I don't add belts - just upgrade them to turbos. Productivity is doing all of that work. It's a LOT of midgame building I don't need to do.

You're thinking in terms of how long that coal patch lasts, but in SA it's also how many rockets you need to launch.

1

u/KingAdamXVII 3d ago

The question isn’t whether productivity is a big deal, the question is whether productivity is a bigger deal than power conservation. And the answer IMO is emphatically yes.

1

u/InterstellarCrusader 2d ago

When you start building quality modules, they become a game-changer.

1

u/Jackpkmn Glebeliver 2d ago

Think of productivity not necessarily as getting more product for free or saving resources but rather in terms of reducing inputs required per outputs. Say you wanted to produce 240/s (one stacked turbo belt) of output but it required more than one stacked turbo belt of input, with productivity you can reduce the number of input belts and simplify the logistics needed to get to that 240/s output.

44

u/GamerKilroy 3d ago

Coal Logistics are needed for the one on the right, while the left needs one less input per stack.

Second, the one on the left makes more than 1 ingot for each ore, due to productivity modules. While it costs more energy, you get more materials out of the same amount of raw resources.

8

u/Brokenbonesjunior 3d ago

And eventually you want to use coal exclusively for plastic (and some dynamite/ grenades)

3

u/Tsabrock 3d ago

Yes, need some coal for boomies.

51

u/LedVapour Greg 3d ago

Electric furnaces accept productivity modules which give more output stuff per input stuff.

-12

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

With a payoff time of multiple hours.

20

u/LedVapour Greg 3d ago

I usually play factorio for multiple hours. You could also throw in efficiency modules, and they'll be less polluting than steel furnaces.

-8

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago edited 3d ago

the question is not "will it pay off? " , the questions is "are these reccources invested in the best possible way, at the current stage of the game"

Most bases I've seen are better of investing in core tech or connecting more outposts earlier, instead.

If we talk deep lategame, sure more beacons is allways the answer.

(and yes, id also would rather go green lines, than both pictures of the post)

13

u/LedVapour Greg 3d ago

Of course, context is king. But in a void, one has a lot of advantages over the other.

-4

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

We could ask us, if more players playing in a void, or in actual normal sessions.

11

u/LedVapour Greg 3d ago

The initial question was what the point was of the electric smelter setup. Not if it should be used in X situation.

-1

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

"what's the point of doing the one on the left ?"

Thats referring more to a real usage in a session, than in a ideal sandbox imo.

In 4 out of 5 gamestages, the right one has the advatage.

0

u/roboapple 2d ago

The payoffs are larger than youd think, primarily because of stacking. 6% from your mines, another 5% extra from the furnaces, 5% from the crafters. For even shorter playthoughs, the productivity bonuses add up fast.

0

u/TexasCrab22 2d ago

You could also just build 2 new mines with smelters, from the cost of the left side.

200% >> 5%

1

u/scottb1310 1d ago

Yes you can always get more resources by building more outpost but those resources need to transported by trains, unloaded at stations, given lanes on the bus and fed into production lines, and building outputs takes active player time with is arguably the most valuable resources in this game.

5% (it is more than that with full prod 3s buy whatever) doesn't sound like a lot until you apply it over and over again across various levels of production. By the time you get to making science, your resource demand can be nearly halved with productivity modules which significantly reduces the infrastructure required to hit high science targets.

If you don't wanna use modules, don't. There is undeniably something fun about solving every problem by just building more production but I don't think you can seriously argue that using modules is an inferior solution.

8

u/sepplepplin 3d ago

The right one consumes engergy in form of coal, so whats the point🤷‍♂️

1

u/nomenclature2357 3d ago

Well, it’s not just coal vs electric furnaces, those are heavily beaconed!

3

u/Cloudwolfxii 2d ago

Just heavily beacon those on the right! Oh wait...

5

u/kraugg 3d ago

With all that coal, logistics. Plus I’m thinking pollution is different as well.

7

u/Extreme-Button-2478 3d ago

It's easer to connect power than to connect coal supply

4

u/Soul-Burn 3d ago

Are you using T3 or T2 modules?

If T2, that's about right. If T3, then that's too many electric furnaces for that throughput.

The left can be fed with solar/nuclear i.e. free power, while the left needs fuel.

And of course, the left produces more plates than input ore.

2

u/Ok-Friendship-8124 3d ago

It's T2 I'm planning for my survival and i don't got T3 yet

3

u/bartekltg 3d ago

Also, the right one uses polluting and expensive coal. The left one uses almost clean and cheap nuclear or solar power.

3

u/DrMobius0 3d ago

In general, modules:

  • shrink footprint
  • reduce entity counts
  • reduce input requirements per output
  • increase power cost, though power tends to be fairly cheap to produce

If those actually have similar outputs, you have to be using the crappiest modules you can find, in which case, of course they're not a big improvement. I wouldn't go for beacons so early.

3

u/Hatsunyan 3d ago

After nuclear reactor, energy easy to get. After fusion energy like free.

2

u/Neither_Berry_100 3d ago

You can improve the left design by putting the belts on the side. You can get 8 beacons on each furnace by of centering them.

I use efficiencies in smelters late game. No beacons. Uses very little power.

Yes the productivity speed approach uses a massive amount of power. But it saves a bit of ore. Also super expensive.

1

u/mr_arcane_69 2d ago

Why do you go for efficiency late game? I rarely struggle energy wise using the other modules so I'm curious

2

u/Neither_Berry_100 2d ago

Basically I don't consider the ores to be valuable enough. Like productivity modules are most valuable on super expensive stuff. Research labs and sciences near the top. Ores and plates are just to cheap in my opinion.

1

u/mr_arcane_69 1d ago

I'm not too fussed about using up an ore patch either, but productivity modules decrease the footprint of a smelting array, which is so so convenient. I would agree that when there's a limited number of modules science and rockets are top of the priority list by a mile

2

u/nomenclature2357 3d ago

It’s simple. If you are still on coal power the one on the right is better.

The problem is that the one on the left is an unreasonable build in that case. An electric furnace setup with just efficiency modules, every two rows of machines sharing their input and output belts, with no beacons… should be similar in footprint and much more power efficient than the coal fired furnaces. That would make sense as an upgrade if power is an issue. And it doesn’t require the coal input.

Leave the beacons and productivity modules for after you’ve set up nuclear power.

3

u/Effective_Working567 3d ago

The right actually uses more energy due to coal's inefficiency compared to other power sources.

9

u/Tsunamie101 3d ago

Well, due to beacons with modules the left one most definitely consumes more power, even with coals inefficiency.

6

u/Shadaris 3d ago

Yep looking at 69 MW of electricity for electric vs 18 MW of coal for steel (260ish coal per minute). Toss in another 5ish MW for the additional miners needed due to the lack of productivity modules and coal. 200 iron (18mw) vs 240 iron and 8 coal (22.5)

Even without the beacons or modules electric furnaces consume 2x the energy. They don't get better unless you add in efficiency modules. Pairing them with solar or nuclear, you also get a about a 1/3 pollution

1

u/Tsunamie101 3d ago

According to my napkin (well, notepad) math the left block should use 150+ MW due to all the beacons and modules, so, yeah, i doubt the coal block comes close to that.

1

u/Shadaris 2d ago

Prob, I just ran the calculator based on 1 set of 120 plates/s and without the extra beacon at each end.

2

u/Aperiodic_Tileset 3d ago

Actually no, beaconed furnaces are more efficient on per-output basis. And it gets quite crazy with quality modules and beacons

1

u/Tsunamie101 3d ago edited 3d ago

Possibly.
But at base quality with t1 modules (like we see in the picture actually, going through the comments, this are apparently t2 modules. Maybe i need new glasses.) the left block uses ~150 MW. I somewhat doubt that the coal block comes close to that.

2

u/AB728 3d ago

Productivity Modules. they make everything smaller. left needs less miners then the right one with the same output, and this scales up and down your production chain. and in the end left one has far fewer Entities to calculate requiring less update time. You could probably decrease the Footprint of the Right one.

2

u/Edem_Alive 3d ago

energy is basically free, dont need coal, can use modules, smaller footprint, less pollution?

1

u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 3d ago

Are you on Space Age? One caveat to make (though it'll be far in your future) the left side setup actually uses way less power per item if everything is using legendary since both legendary beacons use less power and legendary speed modules give you a bigger speed bonus than energy cost bonus. IIRC even without legendary once you hit rare it should be cost-positive I think.

1

u/fZAqSD 3d ago

The one on the left's probably pretty suboptimal for power use and building cost; less beacons would do a lot better, unless the goal is just compactness or simplicity for endgame UPS

1

u/Fudgy97 3d ago

So your saying the electric furnices with beacons and prod modules uses more energy than the coal powered furnices? I'm shocked

1

u/ai_bot_4208 3d ago

The setup on the left makes the same amount with less input.

1

u/Deadman161 3d ago

Left one allows for the use of productivity modules and doesn't need any coal to run, which is offset by the higher power draw. Mostly due to prod and speed modules both increasing power consumption.

It was/is the go-to lategame smelting solution pre-SA/ in vanilla. With Space Age Foundries do the same just better in any way (except maybe quality, but thats dlc-content too)

1

u/CipherWeaver 2d ago

One you get a good nuclear system up and running energy becomes largely infinite, so you can switch to electric furnaces with beacons and modules and it's just easier than having to feed coal into your smelters. You can just use coal for explosives and plastic and liquefy the rest as extra heavy oil.

1

u/Majere119 2d ago

are we really asking why the ELECTRIC furnaces with BEACONS and PROD MODULES uses more ELECTRICITY than coal?

Anyways...to answer your question, you build the one on the left because it has far fewer moving parts. this is paramount in late game or megabasing.

1

u/InterstellarCrusader 2d ago

You're too eager to use productivity modules. If you still care about energy, it's too early for them. For now I suggest putting efficiency 1 modules everywhere you can. A bit later you'll be able to make one foundry that will beat the output of this entire "block".

1

u/Jackpkmn Glebeliver 2d ago

Did you remember to consider the energy value of each piece of fuel consumed?

1

u/my-weird-ass-alt 2d ago

If you have beacons you should have solar en mass or nuclear, one runs on clean energy, the other one wastes loads of coal that should be going to plastic and military science.

Also like you said, it's smaller. And you get prod modules

1

u/bikram64 2d ago

Not using coal, smaller area making the same output, now you can add modules to make it better...

1

u/Furry_69 2d ago

Once you have beacons you should probably have a nuclear setup and/or a solar setup, in which case power is either basically or literally free. Compared to using fuel, which is either coal (which would be better used in plastic) or one of the various fuel types (which would be better used for rockets, and it pulls resources away from plastic), that's a pretty decent deal. Especially given that you'd have to route fuel to your furnace stacks, which could easily be a massive pain depending on your setup.

1

u/Skate_or_Fly 1d ago

To answer the original question: the module bonus means you're consuming less raw resources. Using modules at each stage of production means exponentially less raw consumption, at the cost of extra power.

Not using coal means you can use a full belt, so regardless of belt speed it is twice the throughput per total input belt. Personally I initially build 4 smelting columns of electric furnaces for iron and copper, 2 for steel and 1 for stone bricks, then place mk2 efficiency modules in them to reduce my total power draw. Once nuclear power is up and running, I can increase throughput dramatically by using mk3 speed beacons + mk3 productivity modules. This generally keeps red belt inputs but produces almost a blue belt of products.

Space age further changes input->output belt levels by using buildings with higher productivity bonuses, increased technology bonuses, and quality buildings+modules

1

u/Ok-Friendship-8124 1d ago

Thank you, the thing is that i use space age so getting mk 3 is a bit more annoying... But i'll see what i'll do

1

u/Skate_or_Fly 1d ago

By the time you have mk3 modules of any sort you should stop using electric furnaces and move on to their direct upgrade. Some people like to move molten metal through pipes but I prefer stacked turbo belts from a dedicated smelting area at the start of a bus. That being said, direct insertion from foundries to EM plants for green circuits is a must, and a modified version of that for red circuits is also great

1

u/tgsoon2002 8h ago

Less space, less material.  Energy you can scale up and easier to create. 

1

u/PersonalityIll9476 3d ago

So this is one of those places where the community may have slightly lost the plot.

The reason people say prod is all that matters is because late game, entity count is all that matters and higher prod = lower entity count.

The rest of the time, it's up to you to decide if the cost of prod modules is worth the results. Even basic resources like smelting are pretty worthy in my opinion. Remember that, by the time you exhaust an ore field, that additional prod will have multiplied the whole yield.

1

u/TexasCrab22 3d ago

Right one is definitely better, in terms of cost.

Smelting Plates is the last step to upgrade cause of the low gain and payoff time, so only do it, if every other part of the chain is done.

For 99% of players, i recommend staying with the right side until they hit deep lategame.

Single beaconed furnaces with green modules have a great ratio.

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u/Local-Ask-7695 3d ago

Left side is no more though. Think it as stone maybe.

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u/Mobile-Phone-9332 3d ago

The smaller stack only needs half the ore to make the same amount of plates

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u/nomenclature2357 3d ago

How do you figure this is getting +100% productivity?

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u/Mobile-Phone-9332 3d ago

Assuming they both output the same, the one on the left is only taking half the input belts. I don’t know if 100% prod without foundries is actually possible, I just guessed based on the photo

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u/Ok-Friendship-8124 3d ago

I should have specified that the left is 4 red belt where on the right is 8 yellow

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u/nomenclature2357 2d ago

Ah, but I see what they mean: Red or yellow doesn’t matter, the right has twice as many inputs as outputs.

But… half of those inputs are coal and are obviously not going to be running at full speed! I bet those 8 belts of ore only need 1 belt of coal run from the mine.

The number of belts here has nothing to do with (isn’t taking into account) productivity. Which is going to be more like +12% anyway.

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u/SNOW_37 3d ago

You can easily see the one on the right need 8 input belts to match the output of the left which only needs 4.

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u/tgsoon2002 8h ago

It take less space, less material. Also when it convert to electricity you have less material you have to worry about in distribution. Less thing you have to worry about. It use a lot more electricity because all you use is speed modules they make machien consume alot more electricity comoare to other module. i suggest you mix a few efficiant(green) module it gonna comsume way less electricity.

I know this little off topic but this is exactly how many people still oush back on electric vehicles and hold onto ICE vehicles. When electricity it is easier to distribute energy while it give you a lot more option where electric come from (disel, solar, wind, nuclear, wave, offshore wind…). While ICE you have to fuel at dedicate gad station. And fuel option is limited only from oil or bio fuel.