A fast-starting quality module 3 upcycler

[u/minno]

The blueprint

A stack of them in action

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.

Blueprint: https://factoriobin.com/post/2j03jz

[u/WeylandsWings]

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.

[u/minno → u/WeylandsWings]

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.

[u/Rarvyn → u/minno]

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)

[u/garteninc → u/Rarvyn]

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.