Help me understand beacons....

[captainamaziiing]

I'm building widgets. If I have a row of nine t3 assemblers they can produce 50 widgets per minute for 3.8 energy and 21 pollution.

If I put t3 speed modules in my assemblers it only takes 3 assemblers to produce 50 widgets for 4.7 energy and 24 pollution. A modest cost increase, but the tiny footprint is notable.

If I put one assembler and surround it with 12 beacons, all fully moduled, I also get 50 widgets per minute, for 10.8 energy and 32 pollution. And a large footprint.

Modules are expensive. Assemblers are cheap. Pollution is a pain in the butt.

I do not understand the advantage to using beacons over spamming assemblers for my assembly needs.

The advantage when mining/ pumping oil is obvious. But I can't see the advantage to using them for manufacturing, compared to just adding more assemblers. Cheaper to build. Cheaper to run. Less pollution. Same output.

Can someone explain what I'm missing?

[Jupiter3927]

You can place productivity modules in to get extra products for free.
The beacons can then be filled with speed modules to negate the speed penalty.

[captainamaziiing]

Originally posted by Jupiter3927:

You can place productivity modules in to get extra products for free.
The beacons can then be filled with speed modules to negate the speed penalty.

The orange modules only work for intermediate items. Or don't work for intermediate items. I cant remember. But they don't work for the widgets I was experimenting with. But the combo you suggest is now I set up my mines.

[ChillCore]

- A module in a machine has 100% effect to that machine only.
- A module in a beacon has a 50% effect on every machine in its catchment area.

Taking into account a beacon can have more than one machine in its catchment area you should perhaps, instead of building a single machine surrounded by beacons, build a row of beacons followed by a row of machines followed by a row of beacons and so on ... that's where the power of beacons pays off bigly. ;)

like this:

b p b p b
b m b m b
b m b m b
b p b p b
b m b m b
b m b m b
b p b p b

^^^
p = powerpole
m = machine
b = beacon

Nothing stops you filling both machines and beacons with modules of various kinds of course.

ps: I did not bother displaying the belts and inserters needed in the 'quote' above.
pps : To squeeze in more effect your beacons should not be aligned with the machines.

[Biometrix]

Originally posted by captainamaziiing:

Originally posted by Jupiter3927:

You can place productivity modules in to get extra products for free.
The beacons can then be filled with speed modules to negate the speed penalty.

The orange modules only work for intermediate items. Or don't work for intermediate items. I cant remember. But they don't work for the widgets I was experimenting with. But the combo you suggest is now I set up my mines.

They ONLY work for Intermediate Products.

[astrosha]

Productivity Modules (PM's) only work for Intermediate Products; basically, anything that is an ingredient in another recipe, but that you cannot install to perform a function within the factory. Inserters are ingredients for both Fast Inserters and Long-Handed Inserters, but because they can be placed for use, they are not considered an Intermediate Product.

Also, PM's *slow the machine's output down*, to the point where they actually produce less per minute with the PM's in them, than they do without any Modules at all.

Gears, for example : 2 Iron Plate, 0.5 seconds. An Assembly Machine 3 (AM3) has a 1.25 Crafting Speed. 0.5 / 1.25 = 0.4 second crafting time, or 2.5 Gears/second. This machine consumes 5 Iron Plate per second.

Four PM3's would give it a 40% Productivity bonus, but reduce the speed by 60%. This brings the speed down to 0.5 (same as an AM1). Thus, the machine would craft Gears at 1/sec before the Productivity Bonus is applied, 1.4/sec after it is applied. It would only use 2 Iron Plate per second.

Speed Beacons would dramatically counter this. One Beacon with two Speed Module 3's (SM3's) in it would increase nearby machine speeds by 50%. More Beacons thus set up would further increase the machine's speed.

8 Beacons affecting the AM3, a typical scenario when using the "beacon sandwich" approach to Beacon usage, would raise the machine speed 400%. Combined with the -60% from the four PM3's, you are looking at an increase of 340%. That's 4.4 times the base speed! 4.4 * 1.25 = 5.5 speed. (100% base speed + 340% increase = 440%; this is where the 4.4 comes from.)

0.5 / 5.5 = 0.9090909 second craft time. That means this AM3 would produce 11 Gears/sec before the Productivity Bonus, or about 15.4 Gears/sec in total. This AM3 would consume 22 Iron Plate/second, more than a Yellow belt could bring it.

That beaconed/moduled AM3 produces a little bit more than the output of 6 plain AM3's. Those 6 plain AM3's would consume 5 iron Plate/sec each, or 30 Iron Plate/sec in total. The AM3 with 4 PM3's and 8 SM3 Beacons around it, however, only consumes 22 Iron Plate/sec, about 25% fewer plates, for a slightly higher output.

All of this is ignoring the energy increase, and the concurrent pollution increase. I'm ignoring them because by the time you are ready to start serious use of PM3's in machines, and SM3's in Beacons, you should have plenty of power available (huge solar farms, or a sizeable nuclear power plant) and your defenses should be more than up to the job of keeping your factory safe.

[Нагризолич]

One beacon powering two assembly machines equals those assembly machines having 1 speed module in them. Beacon can power up to 8 machines in a way where you can scale it infinitely, which saves you x4 modules, you can only speed up one assembling machine 3 by +250% speed, while with the same amount of modules in beacons you can speed up multiple assemblers by a total of up to 1000%. Also productivity and speed add up multiplicatively.

[the little pringles]

it takes less processing power to compute beaconed assemblers compared to more assemblers.

becons are amazingly useful when youre pushing the limits of your hardware

[MechBFP]

When using productivity modules you also save significant power using speed beacons instead of just building additional level 3 assemblers, as the power usage of the beacons is much lower than the assemblers.

[Lunacy]

The main use is filling everything with productivity, then using speed beacons to catch them back up to par while hitting as many assemblers with each beacon as possible.
But you're going to need a lot of nuclear power to keep up with the ever-increasing power demand.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Нагризолич:

Also productivity and speed add up multiplicatively.

No. They add up additively.
One productivity module with +10% productivity.
And another productivity module with +10% productivity.
Gives +20% productivity for a total of 120% productivity.

It does not give a total of 100 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 121% productivity.

[Нагризолич]

Originally posted by RiO:

No. They add up additively.
One productivity module with +10% productivity.
And another productivity module with +10% productivity.
Gives +20% productivity for a total of 120% productivity.

It does not give a total of 100 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 121% productivity.

Yes they do. Assembling machine with speed bonus of 100% and productivity bonus of 40% produce items 180%, not 140% faster, this is what I said.

[impetus_maximus]

Originally posted by MechBFP:

When using productivity modules you also save significant power using speed beacons instead of just building additional level 3 assemblers, as the power usage of the beacons is much lower than the assemblers.

↑this is the only situation i use beacons.

[knighttemplar1960]

Without beacons and modules a mega base would be absolutely huge. The screen shots below are 1 of 2 chip sub factories that are required to keep my 1,100 science per minute mega base churning out science.

This bank produces all the green circuits required by the red circuit banks and enough to load a train for other sub factories in the base.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2726500611
In a typical green circuit production set up it takes 3 copper plates to 2 iron plates to produce the circuits. With beacons and modules the ratio of required materials is down to almost (but not quite) 1:1.

These 2 banks produce all the red circuits required by the blue circuits banks and enough to load a train for other sub factories in the base.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2726500556

These 2 banks of green circuit machines produce all the green circuits required to make the blue circuits.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2726500435

This final bank produces 30 blue circuits per second per belt row of machines for a total of 120 blue circuits per second for this single sub factory.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2726500386

It takes 2 of these sub factories, 2 additional red circuit only sub factories, and 2 additional green circuit only sub factories. To keep the base going at 100% production.

If I weren't using beacons and modules these sub factories would be 3 times their size and a huge amount of space (and resources) would be wasted just for belts, assemblers, and inserters.

This final screen shot shows the sub factory on the minimap and the minimap still isn't large enough to hold the entire sub factory in its view field.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2726500315

You don't need beacons and modules if you are only going to launch 1 rocket and call it good. Once you get your base set up to the point that you can launch a rocket pollution production is moot. You have all the tools to keep your base completely protected. The beacons and modules, when you combine production and speed modules, actually cost you less power and raw resources per item produced than just adding machines.

[astrosha]

Originally posted by Нагризолич:

Originally posted by RiO:

No. They add up additively.
One productivity module with +10% productivity.
And another productivity module with +10% productivity.
Gives +20% productivity for a total of 120% productivity.

It does not give a total of 100 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 121% productivity.

Yes they do. Assembling machine with speed bonus of 100% and productivity bonus of 40% produce items 180%, not 140% faster, this is what I said.

Machine produces 1 item per second base.

Machine with 100% bonus speed produces 2 items per second.

Machine with 40% bonus productivity produces 1.4 items/sec.

Machine with both produces 2.8 items/sec.

Productivity is additive with itself. It is additive whether it comes from mining productivity tech, or productivity modules (which is why PM's are not recommended for Miners or Pumpjacks).

Speed is additive with itself. Two SM3's in a machine increase its speed 100%, not 125% (1.5 * 1.5 = 2.25).

Combined, however, the effect is multiplicative. This is why Speed Beacons are so powerful when using Productivity Modules in the machines making things.

[captainamaziiing]

Originally posted by impetus_maximus:

Originally posted by MechBFP:

When using productivity modules you also save significant power using speed beacons instead of just building additional level 3 assemblers, as the power usage of the beacons is much lower than the assemblers.

↑this is the only situation i use beacons.

If the metric in question is items per minute, and the items are not intermediary, then it is less power just lining up assemblers. 9 assemblers unmoduled produced 50 items per minute, same as one assembler with 12 beacons. 9 assemblers was about 1/3 the energy draw of the beacons for the same output per minute.