Speed vs Yield, what do you prefer?

[Nareth Erakian]

I'm curious to hear about your opinions about those two.
I'd say speed later on, because eventually you collect plenty of everything anyways.
But in the beginning, is it worth it to spend all the gold you find to increase the amount you get from other gold, platinum and uranium?
Also on Assemblers, the only "useful" thing in my opinion is speed, due to energy being a non-factor in my current experience, unless playing in tremendously harsh environments. >_>

Current votes on refinerie-moduls:
Yield: 7.5
Speed: 3.5

[bossbill1]

I always go with yield no matter what. The conversion rate for platinum and uranium is, well... not very good ( Being polite, the word that comes to mind is not printable here, lol ). Plus the collection rate for uranium is about the same, it just makes me want to get every bit out of it I can.

[Buzzard]

Platinum tends to go a long ways, meaning that any sizable find will keep one going for quite a while. A little wasted ore doesn't hurt *too* much.
Uranium, on the other hand... you'll never feel like you have enough for everything. I'll cheerfully take on a 95% load of stone, JUST to get every last possible speck of ore out of a rock, and then make damn sure that I get every last achievable fleck from the refinery.

As for speed... well, I do run a monsterous facility. 48-ish refineries all set for max yield will churn through pretty much anything in a short time. It's not the ideal in efficiency or speed, but with the huge build orders that can be completed pretty much as fast as it can get through the gantry...

[ShadedMJ]

"Speed vs Yield, what do you prefer?"
How patient are you? That is your answer.

[DragoF1sh]

Unlike most other people, i go for full speed. The reason why is because I always create automated mining drones or large scale mining operations. This almost always results in having more than I can chew, so speed is very helpful when trying to keep up with the constant supply of resources 24/7. You would be surprised by how much 3 small drones can produces in 1 day.

[seronis]

Each module serves to overcome one bottleneck:

1. Power overcomes energy bottleneck
2. Yield overcomes resource bottleneck
3. Speed overcomes SPACE bottleneck

The only reason to build speed modules is because you dont have the space to build more total machines. At least the power and yield modules make you do a BETTER job by spending less energy or spending less ore to get your outputs.

Also yield modules increase your output enough that its already almost half as effective as a speed module only WITHOUT increasing your power consumption.

Yield > Speed every time

[Lucifer69]

I never use speed. Yield for refineries, power for assemblers. When you have 35 refineries and 70 assemblers, speed isn't the issue. It's making sure you can store all the resources that is.

My current processing station between the earth and moon requires 20 large reactors to function at full load (also 30 backup batteries for when I'm working on the base). The 25 automatic drones make sure it's always full of ore. The 10 battleships protecting the base rotate out every hour for repairs (however they will all launch when an enemy is close).

I never had a need for speed. Maybe on assemblers, but meh. I'd just build more of them if I needed more speed, then all 4 power upgrades. I always have a need for more storage, and often times just build more ships to burn up what I have overstocked (and send then on a suicide run to a nearby pirate base).

[Pembroke]

Speed. You can't run out of ore but time is valuable. The bottleneck is almost always time.

When you get to the point where you start thinking about efficiency and optimizations in your production, you're very likely also at the point where your large miner digs out ore faster than your refineries can process. So, speed.

[Lucifer69]

The only reason for speed is when you need more space. IE can't fit more refineries. In all cases yield is vastly superior. Power has never been an issue, but if you wanted a scaled down version I could see the appeal.

Speed works best on Assemblers. That's the only place where they shine. Even so, when assemblers are my production bottleneck, I just build 10 more, and add power to them. With automatic inventory management and automatic build and repair it's rarely an issue.

[seronis]

speed is utterly most useless on assemblers. Each speed module is the same size as an assembler and more expensive to build so its more profitable to just build more assemblers.

Speed module has NO use other than reducing the total number of machines running. It DOES NOT solve a time bottleneck because more machines solves the same bottleneck and those more machines can use power or yield modules and thus DO A BETTER JOB.

If you arent producing fast enough you build more machines.

[Burstar]

Seronis you need to consider that modules cost 1 PCU vs the much greater X of Assemblers and Refineries. Not to mention it's much more user friendly to have 1 super fast assembler than have to babysit 4+. That's why I like 4 speed on 1 assembler myself.

I also setup another 'Iron Only' assembler using nothing but power modules. It's production is a repeating precalculated ratio of plates, tubes, construction components and girders. It's always running, slowly and cheaply, in the background. I use the high speed one for in demand parts.

[Lucifer69]

I have 70 assemblers that run full time. To keep up with production I had two choices. Add more to a base that's already pushing the PSU to the limit, or add speed on what I have doubling (or more) the production of each, without the PSU hit.

This also assumes you have a proper setup to pull/ push items (or inventory management script). Otherwise more assemblers is just more inventory you'll need to babysit. Speed on one will double the process without adding to the terminal list as well.

As I said, I can only see speed being useful for assemblers. You could argue this either way and be correct on both sides. It's moot. Speed is completely useless on refineries. I will agree 100% on that.

[NYVS]

Speed modules are nice when you have a deadline to meet, with fuel, weight requirements as well. Great for churning through as much iron ore as possible to ship to orbit for repairs to constantly movibg stuff (when you play at speed, you need to factor in clang loss factors...).

[Weaver]

Yield is superior. Higher yield means less mining which is faster. Higher yield means smaller mining and ore transfer vehicles for the same outcome which means less resources to build them which speeds up everything. Smaller vehicles and less trips both mean less resources expended in power/fuel, which again speeds up the process. Ore deposits each last longer because of this which means you don't have to spend time looking for new ones are traveling to further away ones as frequently, which speeds up the entire process. So in any big picture examination of the entire mining process yield is clearly superior and speed is a waste of resources.