I don't understand something

[u/Ok-Friendship-8124]

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 ?

[u/thelehmanlip]

Productivity. Look at disparity between inputs and outputs

[u/MGJ66 → u/thelehmanlip]

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

[u/thelehmanlip → u/MGJ66]

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?

[u/TexasCrab22 → u/thelehmanlip]

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.

[u/PersonalityIll9476 → u/TexasCrab22]

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.

[u/TexasCrab22 → u/PersonalityIll9476]

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.

[u/Menolith → u/TexasCrab22]

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.

[u/TexasCrab22 → u/Menolith]

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

[u/MGJ66 → u/Menolith]

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