A problem will arise if the default setting would have given access to scaled recipes for +1/+2 machines. Very likely some (new) users will then complain their machines are very slow (like several minutes per production cycle) with the scaled recipes, thinking either or both MS & RS mods being unbalanced and bad. This is what I wanted to avoid.
Therefore, there is no single setting that would be good enough to cover every case. This is exactly why it is provided as mod setting allowing user customization. (Otherwise, I would just have hard-coded it to some "optimal"/"universally good" setting.)
Overbuffing multiple beacons to a machine with fast recipe seems to be... an unusual case to me... I would have achieve the same production speed by replacing such kind of construction with a higher tier machine with much less beacons. Less entities, less material (beacon cost), and probably also less power consumption overall. (Beacons are power-hungry, whether they are working or idle.)
BTW, one of my motivation of creating MS is to reduce beacon spamming. For example, 12 beacons surrounding an AM3 is exactly too-gamey and counter-intuitive to me.
Below is a summary for recipe iron gear wheel (0.5 s crafting time):
AM3 (in 4×SM3) |
Beacons (in 2×SM3) |
Crafting Rate (/s) |
Power Consumption (MW) |
1 AM3 |
12 |
22.5 |
10.3425 |
1 AM3 +1 |
0 |
30 |
5.75 |
This shows using a higher tier machine is better than spamming beacons (in 2×SM3).
The beacons are essential only if having to counter a speed debuff (e.g., 4×PM3 in AM3 giving -60% speed).