Module Reballance

[BurnHard]

Efficiency modules: Energy reduction
Productivity modules: Pollution reduction
Speed modules: Production time reduction

Hm. Well. I have a problem with efficiency and productivity. They should be named like so (reduce energy and reduce pollution), because efficiency and productivity means nearly the same.

Yes, didn't explain that clearly. The would have to be renamed of course. I was just thinking of maybe 4 module types:

reduce pollution
reduce energy demand,
speed up production,
energy shield modules that give the buildings more hitpoints, rechargeable.

[Holy-Fire]

I'll mention some suggestions I made here:

1. Make power consumption bonus/penalty multiplicative. So if you put 2 modules each with +50% power consumption, the total consumption will be x2.25 the normal (1.5 * 1.5). If on the other hand you put one +50% power module and one -50% power, your power consumption will be x0.75 the normal (1.5 * 0.5). This way putting too many productivity modules greatly increases power, and efficiency modules are effective in reducing it.

2. Make beacon stacking sublinear.

[Balthazar]

Guys, what if modules had durability? Productivity modules would be a lot less potent if they broke after 100 uses

[ssilk]

100 uses? For copper wire this means some seconds.
Well... 5 hours makes more sense and the construction bots replace hem.

[BurnHard]

Durability for modules? I fear that would then tend to be very micro-management-centered. Everyone agrees that productivity modules are too strong at the moment, IF they should stay the way they work now, the best module should be not producing more than 3-5% extra (somewhere in that region). But I think these discussions about balancing some specific things are more ore less lost work at the moment where the majority? of all production chains, recipies and machines is not even implemented.

[ssilk]

What I meant is, that a durability - maybe only for the productivity module - is not a bad idea. The exact how I won't discuss here.

[Undermind]

I think best way to balance productivity modules is stronger enemies that will be attracted by pollution. As for now you can easily defend factory no matter how high it's pollution level. When new types of enemies appear I hope it wold be really difficult to defend high pollution factory.
But this still leaves speed modules useless. T2 assembling machine cost 9 copper and 44 iron, T2 speed module cost 285 copper and 150 iron, though it provides only 30% speed bonus. I think assembling machine/speed module cost ratio can fix it.

[Coolthulhu]

I think the effective productivity per item idea is the best one so far.
Productivity modules are just too much fun to remove without compensation (anything that doesn't reduce resource consumption doesn't count as compensation) and just a straight percentage nerf wouldn't change the fact that making many items with anything but productivity modules is a giant waste of resources.
Steel chest->smart->logistic chests, for example.

I think best way to balance productivity modules is stronger enemies that will be attracted by pollution.

I think that was the original idea when productivity modules were first added. It would be the most elegant and "fun" one, but balancing attackers is a hard thing to do. Especially now that defenses can be rebuilt during an attack.

Guys, what if modules had durability? Productivity modules would be a lot less potent if they broke after 100 uses

For this to be a viable idea we'd need inserter-insertable modules and modules' costs would need to be balanced against what they produce. Producing a 100 copper 30 iron module to save 100 copper would be a "new player trap".

1. Make power consumption bonus/penalty multiplicative. So if you put 2 modules each with +50% power consumption, the total consumption will be x2.25 the normal (1.5 * 1.5).

This sounds really good, but it might need to be stronger than that. 1.9^4 = ~13 - about 2.5 times the current cost increase.
The idea itself sounds like the right way to go - like refinement of the original idea instead of a hack to make it less useful.

[ssilk]

I think the durability is just a simple calculation: how much should it be worth? And how much does it cost.

Some more ideas:
- broken modules occupy the slot and may have some (small) negative effect.
- broken modules must be removed before adding a new. Either yourself or by the bots... Construction or logistic bots?
- what to do with a broken module? Repair? Refurbish? Recycle?
- You may stack the modules per slot, so that it is automatically replaced (when slot was emptied) until the stack is empty. The new module just "falls" into its place.
- add something like the requester chest, so that the logistic bots adds modules into that stacks (which are then replaced, when the stack is emptied)


And for some calculations:
- I mean to make it worth thinking about the effect must be 2-3 times bigger than the costs.
- if it is refurbished, then the balance is NOT better. But the pollution sinks, because the refurbishing process is much "cleaner"... Instead of creating a new.

[kovarex]

We had a short talk about it, and this is the resolution we agreed on:

- Nerfed down productivity modules. Best module productivity bonus changed: 15->10, it has slow down factor, and its usage in assembling machines is limited to intermediate products.

Intermediate products for this purpose are:

• Iron gear wheel
• Copper cable
• Electronic circuit
• Advanced circuit
• Explosives
• Battery
• Engine unit

What do you think about it?

P.S. It is small spoiler, you can see that there are going to be changes

[BurnHard]

I like the decreased production-factor and the slowdown is a very good idea indeed.

But I am really not happy with the limitation to specific products, it's over-complicating things. You can always argue, why one product and not one another?. What happens when you change the recipe in the machines from allowed to not allowed with modules equipped?

Still doesn't feel like THE solution for final release then. We'll see and test, thanks for the releases so long

[Holy-Fire]

We had a short talk about it, and this is the resolution we agreed on:

- Nerfed down productivity modules. Best module productivity bonus changed: 15->10, it has slow down factor, and its usage in assembling machines is limited to intermediate products.

Intermediate products for this purpose are:

• Iron gear wheel
• Copper cable
• Electronic circuit
• Advanced circuit
• Explosives
• Battery
• Engine unit

What do you think about it?

Not a fan. Sorry.

I don't like artificial limitations. If the system is properly designed there is no need for them.

There should be a consistent and clear tradeoff. Speed modules help you build a more compact factory (and better utilize the other modules). Efficiency modules spare you the need to run around placing tons of solar panels. Productivity modules are powerful but take your power consumption through the roof if you use too many.

With correct numbers we'll be in a situation where combining the different modules is best, with the exact combination changing based on development phase and the situation. Module stats need to change, and also the ratio of (resource cost / crafting time) between the different items should be more consistent. Otherwise high-end items with high cost/time ratio work too well with prod modules.

e.g. If prod module 3 is x3 power (multiplicative), you'll only put 1 or 2 before preferring to put a green module to divide power by 5.

When modules expense is a factor, you'll prefer a machine with a x2 speed module and a productivity module than 2 machines with a prod module each - same number of modules, same productivity, same output, more compact.

PS. I don't know how other people play the game, but for me the focus is about growing as quickly as possible, which means at every step maximizing my ROI rate. Prod modules are generally great for ROI in the late game, but less so (in comparison to other modules) in the earlier stages.

[Garm]

problem is there is no real tradeoff for productivity modules, thats why they need artificial limitations.

[BurnHard]

problem is there is no real tradeoff for productivity modules, thats why they need artificial limitations.

Well the tradeoff is actually increased pollution and needed energy. The values just need some balancing (more energy, and now increased production time is not a bad idea (we want to save some material -> need more time for producing... // doesnt explain of course the increased pollution))

[Garm]

That's not a real tradeoff. A minor inconvenience really.

[Coolthulhu]

I don't like the complexity increase from dividing things into intermediate and end products.
Disabling productivity modules on beacons was already a hack of this kind. More of a workaround than a solution.

• It severely limits the applications of the module
• Special cases instead of a system that works for everything
• It doesn't solve the problem that productivity modules are still the best module you can use there
• You'll still want to use either 4 productivity modules or 0 per machine
• Can't reduce intermediate costs of long chains (inserter->fast->smart chain will now cost all the circuits listed in raw cost)

I like the speed down factor idea. If it was crippling enough, combined with energy cost increase it would make it unfeasible to use productivity modules everywhere. You'd want to have some productivity, some speed and some efficiency modules, with their numbers depending on your factory - as it should be.

[ssilk]

Hm. This reminds me to a magic triangle: the area is always the same: if you drag one point into a direction he other two have to follow to keep the area the same.

[kovarex]

I understand your objections, and I will try to explain why we did the limitation to intermediate products.
(Note that this applies for assembling machines, all other machines that support modules have no limitation, currently: Mining drill, Furnace, Lab)

The problem is, that we have two different situations:
Situation A
If we have product chains with a, like this
A->B->C->D->E->F->G->H->I->J->K->L (a = 10, so 10 steps if I calculated right).

And we have bonus of x in one step (currently limeted to 1.4 with 4 production modules), the overall bonus for the whole chain is x^10, so currently 28.92, which is quite a lot.
Situation B
We have product chain
A->B->C (b=2, so 2 steps), so the bonus is x^2 = 1.96

The problem is, that the nature of the exponential function implies, that it is impossible to balance the bonus to be small enough for large production chains while usable for short production chains at the same time, because the bonuses multiplies, while the penalties are summarised.

By limiting it to certain products, the steps in the chain affected by the bonus is limited, so the maximum difference between a and b is limited by smaller number and balancing of both A and B seems to be possible.

[BurnHard]

Then I have to ask my question again: What happens when you change the recipe in the assemblers from allowed to not allowed with production-modules equipped?

The problem I see with this: These limitation are illogical in ingame logic. Any new player won't understand why these limitations apply.
Everyone would understand just higher negative effects on energy or production time.

[Holy-Fire]

I understand your objections, and I will try to explain why we did the limitation to intermediate products.
(Note that this applies for assembling machines, all other machines that support modules have no limitation, currently: Mining drill, Furnace, Lab)

The problem is, that we have two different situations:
Situation A
If we have product chains with a, like this
A->B->C->D->E->F->G->H->I->J->K->L (a = 10, so 10 steps if I calculated right).

And we have bonus of x in one step (currently limeted to 1.4 with 4 production modules), the overall bonus for the whole chain is x^10, so currently 28.92, which is quite a lot.
Situation B
We have product chain
A->B->C (b=2, so 2 steps), so the bonus is x^2 = 1.96

The problem is, that the nature of the exponential function implies, that it is impossible to balance the bonus to be small enough for large production chains while usable for short production chains at the same time, because the bonuses multiplies, while the penalties are summarised.

By limiting it to certain products, the steps in the chain affected by the bonus is limited, so the maximum difference between a and b is limited by smaller number and balancing of both A and B seems to be possible.

I'm sorry, but this way of looking at the problem is wrong.

This is the point I was trying to make here.

Last time I tried to summarize this point it didn't go too well... So I do urge you to read that post, and the one that follows it.

Putting prod modules in a long production chain can save a great amount of resources per time unit, but at the cost of an equally great amount of setup costs and energy (even with solar panels, energy requires physical space and player time to set up panels).

Also there's more to the game than just the endgame. Prod might win in the very end but there are phases before that, where other modules will beat them on ROI (even for long chains).