Talk:Module
Style
Thanks Bilka for fixing my style issues. I don't want to re-edit your changes without consultation, but I was thinking maybe this capitalization would be even better:
Exceptions to the items listed in this tab are: the satellite, the recipes that fill/empty a barrel, as well as most of the centrifuge recipes: nuclear fuel, nuclear fuel reprocessing and the Kovarex enrichment process.
I'm not actually starting a sentence after the colon, so I thought they should be lowercase? And Kovarex is probaly actually a proper noun, so maybe uppercase that. But then I looked to find if I'm actually right and it turns out that also two colons in the same sentence are discouraged: [1]. So dunno, maybe a bullet list instead? Uukgoblin (talk) 14:02, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
- You are right with useing lowercase after the colons. While Kovarex is technically a proper noun, we treat all recipe, item, and object names as simple nouns, so I'd do the same for the kovarex enrichment provess, for consistency. I don't want that bullet list on the page because it might lead users to believe that those are items the modules can be used on — it catches the eye and people tend to not read the text describing it :P So, I removed the second colon by removing the centrifuge recipe half-sentence and lowercased the rest. Let me know what you think. -- Bilka (talk) - Admin 14:17, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Efficiency modules recommended everywhere
I find this addition to be... dubious:
- When using unclean energy sources, such as boilers in the early game, it is recommended to use efficiency modules exclusively in all machines, with the exception of labs which should use productivity modules. This is because the additional pollution created by the production of electricity will always result in a net loss when using other modules. Labs are able to overcome this limitation due to their naturally low power consumption, the fact they don't contribute any pollution directly, and most importantly because the productivity bonus applies to all science packs being researched, leading to savings of several MJ across the entirety of the production chain in exchange for only a MJ or two of additional expense (roughly 2.2MJ of additional expense for productivity 1, with that number decreasing with higher tiers)
This presupposes that reducing pollution is more important than pretty much anything else. Also, I'm dubious of the numbers behind the idea that reduced resource consumption won't be better for pollution production than efficiency modules. After all, if you're consuming fewer resources, you're mining, refining, and processing fewer resources.
At the very least, this should be reworded to be a recommendation specifically about pollution control. That is, if you need to reduce your pollution to an absolute minimum (perhaps due to playing on deathworld settings), do this. Alfonse (talk) 04:18, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
Response:
I recommend it this way because I believe minimizing pollution is one of the design pressures the developers intend for you to optimize around, especially in the early game, though admittedly this is just my personal belief on the topic and it's not unusual for me to hear others says they couldn't care less about pollution (I personally think that's wrong, but again opinions are opinions). As for the math, you can check it with factorio calc but with the exception of labs there are almost no use cases where running production modules is more efficient than running efficiency modules. You do consume less resources, but each resource is consumed at an energy premium (and in machines that produce pollution directly energy consumption is directly proportional to pollution). The shorter the supply chain is, the less effective the production savings are, and if you think about it compartmentally that means you are always better off using efficiency modules at the start of your supply chain like with miners and furnaces. And the more efficiency modules you use at the start of your chain, the more you actually diminish the cost of those resources further down the chain, making productivity modules less effective in the mid chain, and it sort of becomes like a feedback loop making efficiency modules the best choice at each step of the ladder when you break it down step by step. There are some late game exceptions to this, I'd need to double check because it's been a while, but I believe even the end game science packs with their long production chains ultimately lose out in terms of energy cost (and by extension pollution) when comparing efficiency and production modules if you're already using efficiency modules at all the other steps. Which I'll reiterate I believe you should be because if you work through it step by step it ultimately works out better at each step in the chain and across the board.
That's why I recommended it this way when dealing with dirty power, as not only does it use much less electricity, but efficiency modules also directly cut direct pollution from machines, making it a clear winner. When you inevitably transition to nuclear or solar and electricity becomes practically free and clean then production would become much more viable as you now only concern yourself with the small pollution premium at the machine itself and the energy pollution ceases as a factor. Originally I intended to derive some sort of ultimate pattern or rule for this, at exactly which point production modules overtake efficiency modules, but I quickly gave up because all the different combinations of modules and supply chains is just impossible to generalize neatly. The only generalization I did find consistently was that when you are actually concerned about electrical costs, which would primarily be during the early dirty power phase of the game, then efficiency modules always win across the board, with again the exception of labs which basically always win with production modules.
Hopefully I explained myself well. I'll leave whether to re add this up to someone else as I don't want to be too forceful with my philosophy regarding how I believe the developers intended the game to be played. As far as the math goes through I'm fairly certain it's correct as during my pursuit of a generalized rule for modules I did countless combinations and recipes in factorio calc and efficiency modules across the board always won out. If you can find a counterexample I'd actually love to know what it is so I can adjust my own playthrough :) --GregFirehawk (talk) 22:36, 12 April 2025 (UTC)