Solar power useless mid/endgame?

[Army Pea]

I’ve hit mid/end game in my first play through and starting to question if solar panels in combination with accumulators is worth the massive area they require to be effective.

By this point coal is primarily used to create gasoline and solid light crude now powers my boilers. Considering how compact and efficient generators are directly compared to the area requirement for solar panels , I’m having a hard time justifying the choice to go green.

[tom]

i feel more comfortable with nuclear tbh

[KatherineOfSky]

If you are building a regular base to launch 1 rocket, then you might as well go steam engines all the way.

If you are building a megabase, solar is MUCH kinder to UPS and is therefore recommended over nuclear (which uses fluid physics and many more calculations).

Space concerns are largely irrelevant since land area in Factorio is functionally infinite.

[🆄🅽🅲🅻🅴 🅹🅾]

It looks nice filling vacant spots

[Army Pea]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

If you are building a regular base to launch 1 rocket, then you might as well go steam engines all the way.

If you are building a megabase, solar is MUCH kinder to UPS and is therefore recommended over nuclear (which uses fluid physics and many more calculations).

Space concerns are largely irrelevant since land area in Factorio is functionally infinite.

Follow up questions.

1. What is a mega base? New player here :)

2. Solar is kinder to UPS? Is there a mechanic im missing on how accumulators hold a charge?

[Xandor]

Efficiency modules are great at reducing solar panels needed. They reduce energy cost (and pollution) by 80% even with just 3 level 1 modules (very cheap although some machines can only fit 2 modules).

So with efficiency modules you only need 1/5th the amount of solar panels.

[AlexMBrennan]

2. Solar is kinder to UPS? Is there a mechanic im missing on how accumulators hold a charge?

Steam engine require coal to be moved around, which means the game needs to keep track of all the belts, bots and trains doing the moving. On the other hand, solar panels function as one entity that happens to output a couple GW of power which requires far fewer calculations, which will slow down the simulation less.

[Army Pea]

Originally posted by Xandor:

Efficiency modules are great at reducing solar panels needed. They reduce energy cost (and pollution) by 80% even with just 3 level 1 modules (very cheap although some machines can only fit 2 modules).

So with efficiency modules you only need 1/5th the amount of solar panels.

Forgive my ignorance but i assumed the efficiency module was signed to reduce the power it takes the factory to produce a product.

You can install them in solar panels?!?

[KatherineOfSky]

1. A megabase is the term to describe a very large base, usually one that produces 1+ Rocket Per Minute, and/or 1k Science Per Minute.

Efficiency Modules -- these are placed in factories, etc. However, at a megabase stage, one uses full productivity modules in asemblers + surround with speed module beacons -- this combination actually requires LESS energy overall to produce a product.

Efficiency modules are basically an item that you might use if you are going for a low pollution factory, but generally are only used by new players to the game.

[Army Pea]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

1. A megabase is the term to describe a very large base, usually one that produces 1+ Rocket Per Minute, and/or 1k Science Per Minute.

Efficiency Modules -- these are placed in factories, etc. However, at a megabase stage, one uses full productivity modules in asemblers + surround with speed module beacons -- this combination actually requires LESS energy overall to produce a product.

Efficiency modules are basically an item that you might use if you are going for a low pollution factory, but generally are only used by new players to the game.

Thank you for the answers

[Warlord]

Originally posted by Army Pea:

Originally posted by Xandor:

Efficiency modules are great at reducing solar panels needed. They reduce energy cost (and pollution) by 80% even with just 3 level 1 modules (very cheap although some machines can only fit 2 modules).

So with efficiency modules you only need 1/5th the amount of solar panels.

Forgive my ignorance but i assumed the efficiency module was signed to reduce the power it takes the factory to produce a product.

You can install them in solar panels?!?

Effieciency are used in machines. We're talking about installing them into the biggest power consumers, such as electric furnaces (need 2 mk2 modules to reach max bonus) or electric miners. Less power drain, equals less solar panels needed to maintain your power level, thus less ground used up.

If you start using modules/beacons in machines, they can quickly outpace everything else as your biggest power consumer, but then of course there is no room to do efficiency.

[Xandor]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

1. A megabase is the term to describe a very large base, usually one that produces 1+ Rocket Per Minute, and/or 1k Science Per Minute.

Efficiency Modules -- these are placed in factories, etc. However, at a megabase stage, one uses full productivity modules in asemblers + surround with speed module beacons -- this combination actually requires LESS energy overall to produce a product.

Efficiency modules are basically an item that you might use if you are going for a low pollution factory, but generally are only used by new players to the game.

I have never made a mega factory (I get bored too easily so I change game or switch mods I use and restart before I build anything big).

I wonder how productivity + speed modules can outperform efficiency when it comes to power in a mega base.
I tried to think about the math.

Is it 1 assembling machine 3 with 4 productivity modules + 12 beacons with 2 speed modules in each?

I assume assembly machine 3 gets: 140% production. 420% energy consumption. 40% speed. 140% pollution.

Then the beacons would add 1200% speed, 1680% energy consumption.

So it would get:
2100% energy consumption, 1240% speed, 140% production, 140% pollution.
Which would give 12.4*1.4 = 17.36x products in same speed as a machine without mods.
At 21*210 = 4410 kW + 7 kW drain.

With many machines with efficiency modules:
42 kW * 17.36 = 729.12 kW usage
7 kW * 17.36 = 121.52 kW drain.
850.64 kW total.

Which I think would make the productivity consume 5.2x as much power and produce 7.25x as much pollution. (not counting the beacon energy consumption, I think it would be around 12x as much power consumption when considering the beacons)

I think the difference in power should be greater at a smaller amount of beacons since I think stacking beacons would mainly reduce the penalty of the productivity modules.

Is my math completely wrong? (haven't tried it ingame)

The effiency modules could ofc also be combined with other modules since it is 4 slots and 2 modules is already -100% so 20% too much. So could be more efficient.

[KatherineOfSky]

Xandor, I have not done the math myself; there is a reddit post on the subject.

[FlameWar]

Originally posted by Army Pea:

Follow up questions.

1. What is a mega base? New player here :)

2. Solar is kinder to UPS? Is there a mechanic im missing on how accumulators hold a charge?

1) As Katherine said, a Mega Base is just what the name suggests: a giant base. The bigger it get's the mroe of everything (including power) you need obviously.

2) There are a few things on how solar/accumulators are easier on the ups:

On SOlar/accumulator side:
- All solar panels in a network are treated as a single entitiy calculation wise.
- Accumulators with the same charge level are also treated as one entity calcualtion wise. So once all your accumulators are fully charged in a day, it doesn't matter how many you have. (At least it used to be like that)

On Generator/nuclear side (stuff that increases ups needed for the non-solar generation:
- You need water/steam, and the fluid physics are somewhat wastefully detailed in factorrio, leading to more UPS strain.
- You need fuel. Depending on what you use, you have either mining and transporting of coal, pumping, refining and cracking of oil, then turn that into solid fuel, then transport that, or mining, refining, and enriching uranium, then craft reactor fuel and transport them.

As a general rule, the ups heaviest processes are solid fuel/coal power. Nuclear needs a lot less fuel which saves UPS, and has a lot higher energy generation per Amount of Water/Steam due to higher temperatures, so requires a lot les sof that as well.

But solar still rules them all UPS wise.
You won't ntoice that much untill verrrrry late in the game with a good CPU, but if you got a fairly old one, or a low end/laptop CPU you are gonna see the drain after a coupel dozen hours of building one base.

[Ragnaman]

In maximum-endgame terms:
- productivity + speed is best because you use less entities to achieve maximum throughput (less entities == less impact on Updates Per Second (UPS).
- Power is not important, there is no limit to how many solar panels you can place and 1 solar panel has same impact on UPS as 1000 solar panels.
- non-solar power uses water and water requires calculations for each pipe == bad for UPS. Regular players never reach a performance hit however, game is optimised to mad levels.

Folks who have achieved 3-4k science per minute needed to optimise their factory by thinking how such scale would impact the performance of the game...next level factorio plays.

[Army Pea]

Okay. You guys are driving me crazy.

I’m an electrician and in my world a “UPS” system is short form for “Uninterrupted Power Supply” Which is basically a battery , inverter and fuel powered generator that backs up the city grid in case of an emergency.

I get the feeling that the UPS you are referring to isn’t the same thing.
I mean , I did ask about power generation.

Or am I just really dense today. ?