Kimberlite and Fractal silicon not very useful

[Panfilo]

I find these both to be rather disappointing. This is for a number of reasons:

1.) They only save you a step and not a whole lot if anything in terms of resources. At least with fractal silicon there's always been regular silicon on the same planet. So there's not much reason to bother. On some planets I would have even preferred a different basic node instead because it's not super helpful to have 2 billion fractal silicon but only 50k iron ore on the planet.

2.) There's just not that many recipes for these components. I guess diamonds are needed for some cubes but it's really not a hassle to make them anyway. Perhaps if recipes get nerfed later and it takes a whole lot more coal to make diamonds normally it doesn't seem that helpful. I've never set up a factory and thought "too bad this planet didn't have kimberlite/fractal silicon". But I have wished for organic crystal, fire ice, optical grating crystal and unipolar magnets.

3.) since you can't 'downgrade' them back to their core component you're stuck with a pretty narrow range of uses. At least other rare ores let you skip another resource entirely or multiple steps.

If there were more alternate recipes then maybe these could be made more useful.

[Nasabot]

I agree.

[giimer]

+1

[phillip_lynx]

I do not agree

Kimberlite - removes the vast amount of coal
fractal silicon -removes the vast amount of silicon

And both crystals you need alot.

And sparing alot of machines isnt bad either.

And interstellar shipment is not so bad.

And every single use of less material is good.

But if you dont like it, make your diomonds out of coal and harvest many silicium (which can used for other things) to make the green crystals.

I better have the green crystals without usage of silicium, which I make into other products, which I also need badly, then to waste this silicium on the green crystals.

PS.: I had an very great shortage on pure silicum ingots in my 2nd playthrough.

[darkestkhan]

Fractal silicon is useful as it decreases the pressure on silicon... but kimberlite is indeed useless. Coal is plentiful, and oil gives you endless graphite. Kimberlite has no use afaics.

[Veny]

Comparing these two is an insult :D
Fractal Silicon is great for endgame. Kimberlite would be great in early stages (when mining stuff is faster and cheaper than producing graphite) BUT in early stage you cant get is cuz you need to leave your starting star system.
Once you can actually mine Kimberlite, you are propably swimming in graphite produced during oil processing with no real use.
Diamonds would be great if used as some substitute for optics but their use right now is very limited.

[phillip_lynx]

Hmm...
coal -> graphite -> diamonds (time consuming)
kimberlite -> diamonds (fast)

I would prefere the second.
And the second needs no smelters. And need lesser energy.

[Panfilo]

Like I said, everywhere I found fractal silicon I found loads of silicon. If silicon itself was pretty rare then yeah I could understand.

They could have instead made it a component in an alternate recipe for particle broadband replacing the silicon crystal and plastic and just adjust the rarity of the nodes accordingly.

Something letting you skip straight to steel would've been more useful.

[Bobingabout]

Personally, I'm making diamonds from oil.
I've never felt the need to use Kimberlite, and although I've looked at fractal silicon, since I was already producing a lot of silicon ingots, and only needed about 4/s of the crystals, I ended up just making them from the silicon ingots.

[Flak // Thrm //]

I just smelt coal for graphite and diamonds. Guess that's maybe why I don't have excess hydrogen headaches :)

[Flak // Thrm //]

BTW I'd put Optical Grating crystal to the list. While not useless, it's betraying. I found 1.2M in a system within 4ly. And...... no more. Few more systems with few hundred thousand each. I went to farthest star that listed grating crystal only to find 221k. Since I designed my casimir crystal production based on that first 1.2M I found within 4ly, I had to rework for organic recipe. Lessons learned. Maybe the next game will have more of it... or maybe even less lol.

[Veny]

Originally posted by phillip_lynx:

Hmm...
coal -> graphite -> diamonds (time consuming)
kimberlite -> diamonds (fast)

I would prefere the second.
And the second needs no smelters. And need lesser energy.

Problem is, once you reach Kimberlite deposits:
1) You wont really be creating graphite from coal since you will have plenty from processing oil and other sources
2) Energy for powering smelters wont be an issue for you, because you will already be powering some high consumption buildings, maybe even some particle accelerators. And maybe you will even have Dyson Sphere partially done.

Of course IF the demand for diamonds or kimberlite were much higher (more recipes etc.), Kimberlite would be much more useful.

[Riot]

I originally thought that too re fractal silicon. However, as you get to late game, you need a tonne of both silicon-plate heavy chips, and crystal silicon. The advantage of fractal silicon is that you can use it to produce your crystal silicon, freeing up silicon plate production for more chip production. It's not essential but it is definitely worth doing is highly recommended.

Kimberlite is less essential in my experience. It is more efficient to produce diamonds from kimberlite than coal via energetic graphite, but the savings are less essential/of less practical value. That being said, your energetic graphite demands do increase over time while coal is relatively scarce in universe, so by relieving demand on your home coal resources, you can make do without needing to source more coal from remote locations.

[Flare]

Kimberlite IMO is useful, you want the coals to be assigned to something else, there are a lot more uses of coals than just diamonds.
Fractal silicon on the other hand, just saves you the smelting part and the product isnt used that much, so......

[Panfilo]

Even when your silicon demand goes up, the amount that would need to be used to make silicon crystals is so marginal that I really doubt it'll put a dent in your overall supply. Beyond purple cubes, T3 assemblers and accumulators there's just not that much demand for them.

[Veny]

Originally posted by Flare:

Kimberlite IMO is useful, you want the coals to be assigned to something else, there are a lot more uses of coals than just diamonds.
Fractal silicon on the other hand, just saves you the smelting part and the product isnt used that much, so......

I dont mine coal at all :D