Heavy Modular Frame is unbalanced

[infblu]

I ran numbers to see the most efficient build to support 1 manufacturer that produces the Heavy Modular Frame (without shards).

The sheer amount of resources is staggering, and a little much. I would say you could cut the cost by 75% and still have a hefty cost for production.

To operate one Manufacturer without any resource starvation you require (all units are #/min):
150 - Limestone
50 - Concrete
486 - Iron Ore
281 - Iron Ingot
146 - Iron Rod
90 - Iron Plate
344 - Screw
15 - Reinforced Iron Plate
10 - Modular Frame
205 - Coal
205 - Steel Ingot
30 - Steel Pipe
40 - Steel Beam
10 - Encased Industrial Beam

That comes out to appox (all mining with Mk. 2 Miner):
9 Impure Iron or 5 Normal Iron (4.05, so without shards round up. Mix and match Impure and Normal for whatever combo)
4 Impure Coal or 2 Normal Coal
3 Impure Limestone or 2 Normal Limestone
10 Smelters for Iron Ingots
10 Constructors for Iron Rods
9 Constructors for Screws
5 Constructors for Iron Plate
3 Assembly for Reinforced Iron Plate
5 Furnaces for Steel Ingot
2 Constructors for Steel Pipe
3 Constructors for Steel Beam
4 Constructors for Modular Frame
2 Assembly for Encased Industrial Beam

Not counting the miners, that is 57 buildings to support a single Manufacturer.
With an output of 2/min, which is not enough to support further industry with any efficiency. So you want 4/min? That's 110 buildings, you gain some efficiency. 3.6% more efficient, Wahoo!

None of this includes the power requires to run all those buildings, which not including miners again comes out to 506MW. Coal Generators produce 75MW so you need 7 of them to power 1 Manufacturers support buildings. Add in 55 for the Manufacturer itself
and then 60 for the water and then another 100MW or so for the MK.2 Miners. Comes out to maybe 10 Coal Gens.

Side note, Coal Generators need a buff. Maybe 150MW?

[Kraft51]

i'm going to guess you haven't started unlocking Oil related milestones. fuel generators produce 150mw

[Maehlice]

For what it's worth, that's nowhere near the most efficient build. It looks like you're using all stock recipes, for one.

Try the "Heavy Encased Frame" recipe. Throw in some Encased Industrial Pipe and Steel Screws, and the energy cost drops by almost half what you listed.

Ultimately, though, being energy-efficient should be the least of your concern, because energy is overly-abundant. The total max right now is just shy of 2,000,000 MW. Good luck putting all that to use.

Coal don't need an upgrade ... your factory is more likely to need an upgrade to Turbofuel and/or Nuclear. ;)

[gussmed]

The cost of heavy modular frames really isn’t that big a deal. “It’s expensive” is not the same as “it’s unbalanced.”

The individual parts you’re talking about are on the small side, actually. I’m working my way through my 2nd factory, and I typically have 4-8 assemblers for a single part type.

506 MW isn’t really that much. My end-game factory was consuming 10,000 MW before I built a nuclear plant, provided almost entirely by fuel generators. It wasn’t a gigafactory, either, I generally had only 1-2 manufacturers for each late-game part.

[DrNewcenstein]

I agree the production time and quantity produced is offensive, but I don't mind the support machinery just to get those components. I lay out a spot early on, based on past experience, to put all my big projects on, like manufacturers, and set them up so they can chain into one another for later items like computers and supercomputers.

Alternate recipes such as the one that replaces screws with concrete is good, but IIRC that's the only one? Either way you still need pipes, encased beams (which are now slow AF for some reason - it takes 16 truck stations of coal to make 1 truck station of encased beams) and the frames.

If anything, production time and quantities for assembler and manufacturer parts need to be tweaked. More parts per minute, and considerably less time to make, but without making other machines slower. Consumption rates need to be tweaked as well; too many places where 2 parts are consumed that the supplier of one part cannot keep up at 250%, so the machine it feeds has to run at 43%. Nothing should be underclocked that far.

[gussmed]

You don’t need to underclock anything. If the consumption rate is 2/minute and the production is 1/minute, build 2 machines to build the part.

“I want the game to be easier” is not a compelling reason to tweak manufacturing times.

[Mojo]

I have learned to deal with this is how the game is set up to be played, I do think some of the things it is a bit frustrating when you have to build a ton of machines to meet other production costs.
Even using an alt recipe for just regular modular frames, I have 10 assemblers (not overclocked or underclocked) that give me 30 modular frames a minute. Takes up more space than I would like, but again it is how the game is and I have to adapt to that.

[gussmed]

I know what you mean about feeling like something is taking a lot of space.

The thing about that is that space in the game is virtually unlimited. The map is really, really big, and on top of that, you can always build vertically.

[DrNewcenstein]

Originally posted by gussmed:

You don’t need to underclock anything. If the consumption rate is 2/minute and the production is 1/minute, build 2 machines to build the part.

“I want the game to be easier” is not a compelling reason to tweak manufacturing times.

I didn't say I wanted it to be easier, I said I wanted it to make more sense.
There are parts you can hand-craft faster than a machine can make them. That should be the other way around.

Building 2 supply machines is a fine concept on paper, but falls short in practice when you're dealing with Manufacturers and Assemblers that need one or several Manufactured or Assembled parts in the first place.

Yes, stacked factories and crazy belts, I know. I said I wanted it to make sense.

I build vertically on each node. Miner into smelter into splitter, up to elevated Constructors, out to merger, down to container that is right behind the splitter coming out of the smelter. For steel products, I have a floor for Foundries that goes up to Constructors.
I make it as compact as possible to have more room for other nearby nodes, and paths for truck/train, as well as their stations.

Truck stations will have to be 1 tier lower to make elevation of advanced construction feasible because of the sheer quantity of materials needed. As well, transfer rates from the truck station to containers would have to be by stacks instead of streaming, otherwise you've got a major transportation issue. I know real estate is plentiful, but at some point, you're being coerced into spaghetti belts because building truck stations above the 1st floor of a factory is exponentially problematic.

[JayDub]

Well, Heavy Modular Frames are a mid-game component that is meant to rely on a lot of already existing infrastructure.

One also only needs low quantities of them. HMFs are only used in manual construction, they are not consumed by any other building.

If you build a factory that makes them from scratch instead of relying on input from other factories that produce lesser tier items, then that of course can be a lot of work. Especially when not using alternate recipes.
But you're not *required* to do this - that's rather a specific playstyle, one which people often switch to in the late game when they've run out of other things to do.


Manual crafting may be faster, but keep in mind that you can craft only one item at a time, and it's annoying to do so.
The goal isn't to make one item as fast as possible, but to have multiple items being produced in parallel, continuously and automatically, at a rate that is sufficient for the demand thereof.

[Shahadem]

Yeah I really think more recipies need to be 1 to 1 to 1 to 1.

Not 1 to 4 to 8 to 30\

The costs are just too excessive to the point of being offensive.

The recipies don't even make any freaking sense. Heavy Modular Frame should just be the equivalent of the modular frames but made out of steel instead. SO it should be EXACTLY THE SAME as modular frames but steel instead of iron.