Schall Machine Scaling

Summary

Adds scaled up versions in different sizes for various machines. Number of overtiers can be freely adjusted. Designed for megabases and gigabases, by reducing total number of entities (thus reduced save file size, improved UPS). Includes assembling machine 3, chemical plant, electric furnace, oil refinery, centrifuge, lab, boiler, steam engine, steam turbine, heat exchanger, nuclear reactor, storage tank.

Introduction

Want to build megabases or even gigabases, but frustrated with low UPS? This mod will help you a lot! Scaled up versions (called "overtiers") of various machines are introduced, which include resource-handling machines (electric furnace, oil refinery), production machines (assembling machine 3, chemical plant) to power machines (boiler, steam turbine, ...).

Each higher tier is exactly 4 machine of its lower tier, in terms of crafting speed, power consumption/production, pollution, or any other properties. The only difference is they are combined into a single machine, thus effectively reduce the number of entities on map. This ratio is exponential, meaning you will cut the total number of entities even further with very high tier machines. (For example, overtier +4 is exactly 256× of vanilla machine.)

Usage

For example, an "electric furnace +4" machine is effectively 256× vanilla electric furnaces in terms of smelting rate. If your megabase is currently having about 2000 vanilla electric furnaces (along with their inserters), with this mod you can replace these furnace arrays with just 24 entities (8 "electric furnace +4" together with inserters/loaders)!

Massive nuclear power plant (say, >10 GW) is known to be an UPS killer, due to large number of entities (with fluid calculations in them). Each "steam turbine +3" can replace 64× vanilla steam turbine, improving UPS dramtically.

You can use other overtier machines for the circuit production, rocket production, and oil industry as well!

Since the production rates of these overtier machines are very high, it is best to use loaders (instead of inserters) to load ingredients and unload products from them. Loaders can be "unhidden" by various mods, including Schall Belt Configuration and Loader Redux.

Note

Very high tier machines may NOT work at theoretical rate. This is due to limitation by game engine, only 1 crafting per tick for each machine, or equivalently 60 crafting per second. This limit is not visible for recipes with longer time. For example, this does not come into effect for rocket fuel (30 s) made by assembling machine 3 up to overtier +5 (without modules). Recipes of very short time, like iron gear wheel (0.5 s) would have limited crafting speed from overtier +3. Any high tiers would still have the same output rate, but wasting unneeded power.

This limitation can be pushed higher by "multiplying" the recipes. Please see Schall Recipe Scaling for details.

For a quick reference of what overtiers to be used, or an in-depth analysis of production rate limitation, please see the FAQ section.

Schall Entity Inspector has a direct and clean ingame GUI, to display production rates of various machines (including most machines of this mod). Speed and productivity effects from modules and beacons are also supported. This is particularly useful, so no longer need to calculate production rates or limitations, by yourself outside the game now.

If fluid flow is hurting your UPS, or you want to use an UPS-friendly nuclear power plant, please check out Schall Pipe Scaling mod too! Example designs (with blueprints) are shown on its FAQ section.

Uninstallation

This mod does not modify any existing content to the save files. This mod should be safe to be disabled/uninstalled at any time.

Mods Dependencies

• Schall Pipe Scaling is optional but highly recommended, since the high flow rates pipes and pumps are extremely useful for the heat exchangers and steam turbines. Use together to improve UPS of your megabase even further!
• Schall Recipe Scaling is optional but highly recommended, since this mod allows the overtier machines to run beyond the vanilla recipe limitation.
• Schall Machine Modification is optional but useful, since this mod provides the overtiers over those modified machines, which allow more flexible applications.
• Schall Starting Inventory is optional but useful, since it allows adjusting starting invenotry, like some boiler +2 and steam engine +2 as initial items.

Mods Related

• Schall Belt Configuration allows adjusting properties like belt speed and underground belt distance. Also option to "unhide" vanilla loaders.
• Schall Entity Inspector has a direct and clean ingame GUI, to display production rates of various machines (including most machines of this mod). Speed and productivity effects from modules and beacons are also supported.

Mods Compatibility

• Disco Science has some fancy graphics to the vanilla labs. It is applied to labs overtiers as well. Offe