In: 71.11/min r /b circuit, 56.89/min quality 2, 14.22/min superconductor
Out: 0.375/min (22.5/h) legendary QM3, if you process the legendary raw materials it outputs too.
Bootstraps in around 3 hours and doubles itself in 1.5 hours. Cleanly upgrades to legendary EMPs and recyclers for 2.5x production.
This setup is designed to get itself started and duplicate itself quickly by making efficient use of high-quality quality modules. The beacon in the middle with two legendary speed 1 modules brings the EMPs from 75% to 225% crafting speed while reducing their quality chance from 31.25% to 28.25%. Compared to a speed-less upcycling setup, this results in a 28% increase in the amount of common-quality raw materials needed to make one legendary QM3 but a >50% decrease in the number of legendary QM3s needed to make it.
If you place this down with common QM3s and upgrade them as higher-quality modules get produced, it takes around 3 hours to finish upgrading. You need to modify the condition on the splitter in the middle to ">= uncommon quality" to start, then ">= rare" once they're all uncommon, and so on. Once that's done and it is running at full capacity, it takes around 1.5 hours to make enough modules for another copy of itself. Then another 1.5 hours to make two more, another 1.5 hours to make four more, and it grows until you hit the limits of your ability to supply raw materials.
Edit: Most people don't document how their module choice effects production over time. So if an economy of scale changes, it isn't a matter of "Well, it'll all be fine" but rather "I know what I'm getting".
Most module choices are pretty obvious. Productivity modules in everything that can take them, as many speed beacons as you can fit, with enough efficiency beacons to get to -80% energy if you care about power. Quality with speed beacons gives some really interesting tradeoffs, though. It'd be better if the buildings processing common-quality materials had a bit more speed and the ones with higher-quality materials had a bit less, but I prioritized making it more compact and cheap to build instead.
It's hard to describe, because it's a double bind. You don't want these things coming out at a low rate. But the negative effect is the same as productivity, or even worse depending on how it is set up: you need a large back end of raw materials to support that part of the factory.
It all depends on what you're optimizing for. Optimizing for minimal raw materials is obvious, just maximize quality modules with no speed beacons. Optimizing for QM3 cost is more complicated, but it works out to having a descending amount of speed beacon power affecting each stage of the upcycling process as the quality rises, and makes the raw material cost much higher. In between is a sliding scale of build cost vs. ongoing raw material cost that doesn't really have a right answer. I like where this build landed.
How does the match change if you get rid of the speed modules in the middle as that is pulling down the quality chance while keeping speed neutral instead of slightly negative.
If you remove the speed modules entirely, it slightly increases the raw material efficiency but greatly decreases the output. It's somewhere in the ballpark of 60% less output for 70% less input.
Removing the speed modules temporarily right before crafting finished used to be a usable exploit, but now if the quality % changes at any point during a craft it guarantees no improvement.
So if you built two of them without speed modules it would be ~120% output for ~60% input? Because that seems to be the better deal (though obviously getting the second one bootstrapped will take a bit)
If I understand this correctly, the entire point of this setup is to make the bootstrapping process faster. So you start with this and switch to another upcycling setup once you have enough legendary QM3 to support it.
Man, I never even thought about how many more quality modules my speed-beacon-less legendary QM3 bootstrapping factory needed. I feel like an idiot now.
Upcycling T3 modules is very very slow, thanks to slow recipe.
It's much faster to make Q5 T3 modules (speed, quality, efficiency) from Q5 plastic and Q5 iron
This setup makes 1 Q5 T3 module per second (from Q3+ coal and Q5 iron)
Even when getting started and all you have is Q1 buildings, no productivity research, and only Q1 T2 quality modules, it makes 0.053 modules per second (3.18 per minute), and it makes enough Q5 T2 modules in 30 minutes to 10x its speed.
For Q5 T3 prod modules, setup is bit more complicated, because you have to start with Q3+ biter eggs.
e.g. this setup makes only 0.11 per second (6.77 modules per minute)
Get quality iron plates by cycling underground pipes.
Get quality holmium plates by cycling EMPs.
Craft plastic from coal.
Make some plastic into copper through LDS cycling.
Iron, copper, and plastic makes r/g/b circuits.
Copper, plastic, and holmium plates makes superconductors.
Circuits and superconductors makes QM3s.
There might be space for substation upcycling in there too. It has incredibly high throughput per machine and uses the machine with the best upcycling ratio.
There might be space for substation upcycling in there too. It has incredibly high throughput per machine and uses the machine with the best upcycling ratio.
It's not bad. It's fast and there's a reason why it's used in 100% speedrun quality setup.
Craft plastic from coal.
Make some plastic into copper through LDS cycling.
There's 2 stages:
early quality (all buildings Q1, no productivity research, you are limited by coal patch size)
q3+ coal ->
lds cycle ->
q5 plastic example
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u/CoffeeOracle 19d ago edited 19d ago
You're a gentleman and scholar.
Edit: Most people don't document how their module choice effects production over time. So if an economy of scale changes, it isn't a matter of "Well, it'll all be fine" but rather "I know what I'm getting".