Introduction
Beaconing is a key part of the game for producing large amount of products with important saving on resources. It involves two kinds of modules : speed and production.
Huge saving can be achieved by using the production modules but for the tradeoff of slower production rates. This can be solved with speed modules. Scaling a factory with modules is very expensive in resources, still nice saving can be achieved with MK1 modules only.
This book embeds 4 blueprints that shows how things scale with no modules, module MK1, module MK2 and finally module MK3.
Compact factory
The main problem with beaconing is to save on modules because modules are damn expensive to craft for the last grade. Having a compact design with beacon impacting multiple assemblers at once is good.
Tilable
As a bonus, this compact plastic processing blue print is tilable which means that the second row has a 'free' line of speed module beacon.
The numbers
Blueprint is provided with the 4 levels of modules, none, MK1, MK2 and MK3.
- Without modules : 100/mn for 1.2K/mn crude or 12 crude / plastic
- With MK1 modules : 500/mn for 4.2K/mn crude or 8.4 crude / plastic
- With MK2 modules : 820/mn for 6K/mn crude or 7,3 crude / plastic
- With MK3 modules : 1.6K/mn for 9.6K/mn crude or 6 crude / plastic
Up to 50% on crude oil can be saved compared to unmoduled production.
Conclusion
Production rate without modules is pretty poor to the least. It doesn't even produce what a single chemical plant is capable of (150 plastic/mn).
It is advisable to beacon early with MK1 modules. It provides a x5 boost compared to unmoduled setup for a pretty cheap investment of only 310 green and red circuits (not all beacons have to be moduled with MK1 to reach full capacity). Another important bonus is the 30% saving on crude oil.
Modules FTW!
Bonus blueprints
Two supplemental blueprints are available for producing acid and batteries. They are also tilable with the plastic ones. A single acid unit fully moduled with SM3 and PM3 (Speed Module3 and Production Module 3) is capable of providing enough acid for 20 beaconed batteries plants. There is a little more acid that can be sent for Uranium ore mining or processing chips assemblers. Those two blueprints aren't provided moduled and should as shown above be moduled at least with MK1 to be worthy.