Update: the mod author has officially abandoned the mod, if you wish to take over the mod, pm the author via the forums.

0.0.12 - update to 0.16

• changed the limit for furnace groups from 360 to 1080, a limit of ~10 million plates/minute.
• fixed api changes for 0.16
• updated circuit connectors to use the .16 setup

About the mod:

Please read below for known issues
This is the 2nd mod I've made to reduce the ups impact of aspects of the game. This mod, in short, simulates a group of up to 60 furnaces, and 100 beacons in one iteration. In tests I've gotten 3.3 million plates per minute without slowing down the game. (A 6x+ reduction in cpu time compared to a vanilla furnace array of the same size)

What the mod does:

The mod makes a few shortcuts to simulate things. Most notably, it uses an electric energy interface, which acts like an accumulator, to 'pre-purchase' the energy needed to run the furnace at 100% for a complete cycle. This allows about 1000 craft cycles to be simulated in one tick at a low cost.

Making a furnace group:

A furnace group requires:
1 core (the electric interface)
1-100 modified beacons
1-60 modified furnaces
1-4 input 'chests'
1-4 output 'chests'
A selection tool allows a player to select and create the group once entities are placed. Up to 360 groups can be made, each one handling 9600 ore per minute, and outputting 11520 plates per minute. A furnace is deactivated when a part of the group is either removed or destroyed, require recreated the group with the selection tool.

Known Issues:

• Theres no animations or sounds for the beacon/furnace buildings at the moment: any current solution add's too much to the ups cost to implement.
• I want new graphics for the entities at some point but lack the skills in blender. If anyone wants to spend the time to help out, that would be appreciated.
• there are few sanity checks on furnace groups besides quantity and overlapping, you can technically make a group that has pieces that are thousands of tiles apart.
• fast replace disables the furnace group

Change Log:

• 0.0.10
  • Fix for stone and steel production amounts
  • Known issues, very small groups won't smelt steel. (use regular furnaces for small groups...)
• 0.0.9
  • fix: you could get weird numbers if you used 1 furnace and 100 modded speed beacon.
• 0.0.8
  • fix: switch what event triggers the removal of the group, reduced spam when removing input/outputs
  • fix: energy dropping to 0 when group removed
  • fix: removing the first furnace group made on a save would break table lookup functions for future operations
  • added pollution amount, add's 7.2 pollution for every 200KW above the idle power drain on each furnace update
• 0.0.7
  • fix: incorrect setting of idle power draw
• 0.0.6 - first Release
  • fix: loss of inputs when not enough power
  • fix: handling of multiple types of inputs/outputs
  • added logistic requester/passive provider chests
  • using standard beacon/furnace graphics for speed/batch entities
  • new graphics for: core, input, output, known issue: the buildings perspective is out of place compared to the beacon/electric furnace graphics
  • fix: power draw accounts for amount of ore used in the batch cycle
  • new icons
• 0.0.5
  • Early test for variation changing
  • 0.15.12 is the minimum required version (for the production graph)
  • limited groups to 360 total (4 million copper/iron plates per min.)
  • fix: existing usage check
  • fix: production graph now displays properly
  • fix: power draw ammounts now correct.
  • fix: steel usage
  • fix: new method for handling furnace groups
• 0.0.4
  • improved debug readouts
• 0.0.3
  • Simplified creation logic:
  • blueprint item selects the furnace group and add's it to the backend scripts
  • removing or losing 1 furnace piece will lose the current cycle of materials and disable the furnace group
  • one furnace group will process a cycle every 6 seconds, yielding up to 1152 plates (fully laden) off 960 plates intake.
  • a battery backup allows the mod to assume 100% power usage while the mod will switch to 33% usage of there isn't enough electricity.
  • about 4 million plates/minute on .2 ms script time (on my i5-4670k) with 360 furnace groups processing.
    known issues:
  • Electrical network values incorrect
  • the consumption/output statistics show up only in the all section. no graph, no nothing. https://forums.factorio.com/47462
• 0.0.2
  • changed how furnace pieces are added and removed from the backend scripts.
  • removing one piece loses the furnace contents and the entire furnace
• 0.0.1
  • initial testing