Which offers faster productivity?

[Jeff]

I have a large grid mining ship with a refinery on board. It’s outfitted with 4 speed modules. Would two refineries with no modules be faster productivity?

[frag2k4]

No, 4 speed modules give 500% speed equal to 5 refineries, that said they also drain 2.8MW
while a refinery on its own takes 560kw which is a 5th, the main advanatge for more refineries is you can refine different ores at once but going through an ore 5x faster a 4 speed beats out 2 without anything. Still a refinery without any modules is a waste, whether you slap power saving, speed boosting or yeild on them its better to have than not.

[frag2k4]

So did some testing and while stopping the refineries took a little longer because I didn't think to here is my test.

Refinery 4 speed
Iron ore 10k

Refinery bare
Iron ore 5k
Refinery bare 2
Iron ore 5k

So both have the same amount of iron ore in their separate systems. The refineries were turned on at the same time and went to work with these outcomes. Slight failure on my part to shut refineries down after speed refinery finished resulted in slightly inflated results for bare versions.

Refinery 4 speed
Iron ingots 7k

Refinery bare
Iron ingots 1.94k
Refinery bare 2
Iron ingots 1.94k

Second test resulted in 1.83k with quicker shut down of refineries. All other parameters were the same.

[Zellnagi]

Normally people dont need to choose, if you have two refineries loaded with speed and yield then you have extra to work with sooner, more organized if you use sorters.

Also make sure you dont have the basic refinery once you have the big ones loaded with modules, that can mess up your productivity.

[ShadedMJ]

If refining iron and/or scrap metal, it would probably be better to use yield modules. Personally, I'm a patient person, so I use all yield modules, which gives more ingots per ore. I just never needed ingots immediately.

Keen broke yield module limits a while ago. With 4 yield modules, 1000 kg of iron ore refines to 1400 kg of iron ingots (increase in mass). 100 kg of scrap metal refines to 160 kg of iron ingots.

[Jeff]

I was pretty shocked and delighted to hear your replies. The only problem still have was not getting enough ore into the refinery. It would take in 2,000 kg, then refine it in a second, then take another tiny “gulp”. This was far too slow when the refinery starts and stops continuously. Gonna try adding a sorter with drain all on to keep the refinery full and running 100%. Will add another sorter setup the same way to suck the ingots into storage.

[Wastefield]

Especially worth noting is also the minimal cost of the upgrade modules. You can check each block's total cost in ingots within the assembler production tab. Speed module was something like 1/10th (or even less?) of the cost of a refinery and one module will double* your output - same thing applies to their weight as well, which is just as important if it's on a ship.

But I'm usually more of a fan of yield and power efficiency modules as those have no drawbacks, so my usual balanced setup includes 1 speed, 2 yield and 1 power: works twice as fast and extracts 41% extra ingots from the ore so totals around 2,8 times faster ingot production while consuming about 750kW or <1,5 times baseline consumption. (Although power may matter less eventually when sitting on tons of uranium instead of running on Solars that also have to power all my ships which run on batteries...)

*at least approximately - I read somewhere quite a long time ago that the baseline is actually 120% or 140% and it then adds +100% to that, meaning it's effectively around 80-90% increase, in case you wonder about some odd numbers if you try to test these exactly...

[Jeff]

My large grid mining ship has 144 drills (12x12). So it takes in an incredible amount of ore. Sitting there waiting for it all to refine would hold back the mining time. My power is at a surplus. So using yield modules would only be used if the refinery was “waiting” for ore. Of course if the refinery was starving for ore, I would just add more drills 😉

[Mollymawk]

I use a stack of basic refineries for stone, i don't need them, but I like this strategy, I don't bother bringing stone back very often but when i do my main refineries don't get interrupted. As needs changed i can just add or remove reactors to the stack.

I often start my refineries with power saving modules, but convert to yield modules once I have power sorted and can make enough superconductors ( they need gold, so not top priority early on) .

I find speed modules just mean reactors sitting idle between mining trips.

Once established, there no need to save power. Just make more power generation.

Yield modules let you spend less time mining and storing/transporting vast amounts of ore.

If i am not getting ingots fast enough, the best fix is to build another refinery.
The production speed bottle neck is short lived, and i find I always need more capacity anyway , so additional units is THE best way to speed up.

I love uranium , there I've said it. You simply cannot beat large reactors with a few tonne of uranium in them.

In my current solo game, to feed this uranium habit, I have currently have 15 refineries all with yield mods (uranium is rare) doing nothing but processing uranium. I have loads of all other ingots already, but should i need i can just push a stack of other ore in.

My setting are all on realistic, and there is about 5000kg of uraniium ore to chew through and more coming. That can now sit a few days while I make some drop pods to seed planet side bases and start other projects.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Yield modules, baby, nothing but yield modules. You double your output for the same processing time, so you effectively double your speed. You end up having to mine and transport less ore this way, too.

[Jeff]

Well if you read about yield modules as I did, you will see that just two of them gets you just over 98% more. So adding two more seems wasteful.

[Wastefield]

AFAIK it's multiplicative 9% per module node and each module has two nodes. Two modules gives 4 nodes that together yield 41% extra. Adding two more brings it to 4 yield modules, 8 total nodes and 99% extra ingots.
Only iron had a limit that its 70% ore-to-ingot ratio could not be pushed past 100%, all other ores have so low ratios (1%-30%) that this doesn't concern them. I didn't know this rule was broken at a later time so now even iron could get the full benefit, thanks @ShadedMJ for that updated info!

[frag2k4]

Originally posted by Jeff:

Well if you read about yield modules as I did, you will see that just two of them gets you just over 98% more. So adding two more seems wasteful.

At no point is 4 yield wasteful since Keen didn't fix the bug of larger returns.

2 modules give an increase of 41% while 4 gives a 100% increase, with scrap metal being 80% returns by weight and iron ore and silicon being 70% you get 160% and 140% back.

However since the next highest ore you only get 40% you get 56kg per 100kg @ 2 or 80kg per 100kg.

By the time you get down to ores like magnesium and platinum which are 0.7% and 0.5% each 4 is a requirement to get every last kg.

Originally posted by Wastefield:

AFAIK it's multiplicative 9% per module node and each module has two nodes. Two modules gives 4 nodes that together yield 41% extra. Adding two more brings it to 4 yield modules, 8 total nodes and 99% extra ingots.
Only iron had a limit that its 70% ore-to-ingot ratio could not be pushed past 100%, all other ores have so low ratios (1%-30%) that this doesn't concern them. I didn't know this rule was broken at a later time so now even iron could get the full benefit, thanks @ShadedMJ for that updated info!

Iron and silicon can be pushed past 100%, this is confirmed as of this post.

[ShadedMJ]

Originally posted by Jeff:

Well if you read about yield modules as I did, you will see that just two of them gets you just over 98% more. So adding two more seems wasteful.

and my post said you can add two more. That raises the yield for iron from 98% to 140% which the game allows.

[Tregrenos]

I prefer Yield modules as Speed would essentially be the same thing, but you'd burn through your resources faster with less return. Not that bad for refining Stone or Cobalt, but for Silver/Gold/Uranium I'd rather go Yield. I only use Power modules if power is a huge concern, such as a public crafting station with limited power not connected to a true power grid OR if it's on an "all purpose" mobile starter unit using Ion Thrusters.

[Jeff]

Guess what I read about this was an old post and obsolete. Another post I read today said that nine small cargo containers are two times more than one large cargo. I checked that out and it wasn't true (at least not anymore).