Does Speed on a 0.1/s oil well do anything?

[Plawerth]

I see people slapping Speed modules onto 0.1/s oil pumps, and I have to ask, is this actually doing anything? Apparently the base flow rate cannot go below 0.1, but at the same time look at the stats for this Speed 3 boosted pump encircled with sixteen Speed 3 on the beacons:



- Pump rate: 500%
- Energy +700%
- Expected resources 0.1/s

So are the Speed modules completely useless and doing nothing, or do they actually have an effect?

[Engimage]

Short answer - yes.
Only speed modules do increase the pump rate of 0.1 pumpjacks. So in endgame you put speed modules into pumpjacks + surround them with speed beacons and watch pollution explode all over the place.
But who cares about pollution...

[Plawerth]

Er, is that yes they do nothing, or yes they have an effect?

[Engimage]

Er, is that yes they do nothing, or yes they have an effect?

They have an effect. They work as you would expect increasing oil output.

[Hannu]

Er, is that yes they do nothing, or yes they have an effect?

They have an effect. Oil pump creates some amount of oil per a working cycle and speed modules decrease time of the cycle.

Is it optimal for your purpose depends on many things. Do you prefer exploring and opening new oil production outposts or large scale module and power production. It depends also on phase of the game. At mid game it is typically better to establish new oil fields but at late game (after you have begun continuous automated rocket production, some players play never that phase) it is more effective to produce modules.

[iceman_1212]

If the concern is that the 0.1/s figure doesn't change on the pumpjack - don't worry. The way to interpret that figure is 0.1 liters per cycle with the pumpjack having a base cycle time of 1 second. The +% from speed changes the cycle time, not the yield per cycle - but the effect is the same. More oil. It's possible to get effective 0.7 l / s but even tripling or quadrupling is well worth it imo.

[Frightning]

The 0.1/s is technically a lie. It's 0.1/cycle, and it just so happens, that the base speed is 1 cycle/second (this is because of the mining values for Oil fields and Pumpjacks give a base result of 1 cycle/sec via the relevant equation; same one used for mining drills and Copper ore/Coal/Iron ore/Stone and presumably Uranium when 0.15 hits). With speed modules, the speed, in cycles/sec is modified, and hence oil income rate actually changes, but the amount per cycle does not (which is what the 0.1 shown is really saying). So the pictured Pumpjack is 0.6 oil/sec because it executes 6 cycles/sec, each producing 0.1 Crude oil.

[Frightning]

If the concern is that the 0.1/s figure doesn't change on the pumpjack - don't worry. The way to interpret that figure is 0.1 liters per cycle with the pumpjack having a base cycle time of 1 second. The +% from speed changes the cycle time, not the yield per cycle - but the effect is the same. More oil. It's possible to get effective 0.7 l / s but even tripling or quadrupling is well worth it imo.

It's possible to get more than 0.7/sec, ideal setup can have 12 Beacons around a single Pumpjack (provided nothing else is in the way, which is rare in practice). In such an extreme case, perhaps surprisingly, it's actually better to put 1xProductivity module 3 and 1xSpeed module 3 in the Pumpjack instead of Speed module 3s. This is because, with such a large speed boost from the beacons, the marginal gains from speed in the Pumpjack are overcome by the productivity multiplier, despite the opportunity costs, including the penalty to speed. The result is a Pumpjack with +635% (+650%-15%) to speed and +10% to productivity, for a total income of 1.1*(0.1*(1+6.35))=0.8085 Crude oil/sec.

[DaveMcW]

Your 12 beacon numbers are a bit off.

26x speed module = 0.8 oil/s
25x speed module 1x productivity = 8.085 oil/s
24x speed module 2x productivity = 8.04 oil/s

And of course it takes 6.7 MW to power everything.

[Frightning]

Your 12 beacon numbers are a bit off.

26x speed module = 0.8 oil/s
25x speed module 1x productivity = 8.085 oil/s
24x speed module 2x productivity = 8.04 oil/s

And of course it takes 6.7 MW to power everything.

Derp, forgot to subtract opportunity cost of not having speed in the Pumpjack, still comes out ahead. Your numbers for w/ prod are off (by a place value) though.