is spray coater worth it?

[Goose]

It seems like its not that good, is it worth trying to do at all or should i just ignore it?

[robfilrhijar]

Makes a huge difference honestly it is worth it especially for fuel for mecha and power generation in general. Mk 1 is not worth it but mk2 and mk3 definitely make a difference.

[Dragonmaster]

^ pretty much. Don’t bother with 1 but 2-3 yes. As for what to spray, matrixes are priority 1 followed by the more rougher intermediates early game. Only do ore and base level mats when you get to the end game.
And always fuel as it makes it last longer and most cases speeds up how fast it charges the mecha

[nevryn]

On high DF settings even the Mk1 makes a difference so you want to spray coal, copper, and the ammo (bullets, missiles). getting to Mk2 is not that difficult and make sure you spray all inputs to the production chain with Mk2 even the MK2 before you use it to spray anything else.

[Nekogod]

Absolutely worth it. In extra product mode specifically as it stacks in a multiplicative way.

Particularly useful for long product chains like green matrices or rockets, despite using coal and extra power the massive reduction in required materials and machines as you go down the line often ends up saving you power and coal.

Green matrices as an example, lets say you want to produce 6 per second to fill a mk 1 belt.
Without proliferator:
Power 667MW
Iron 138/s
Coal 96/s
Silicon 48/s
Copper 54/s
Titanium 60/s
Stone 24/s

With Mk 2 proliferator it takes
Power 615MW -8%
Iron 39/s -72%
Coal 88/s -8%
Silicon 20/s -58%
Copper 18/s -66%
Titanium 22/s -63%
Stone 10/s -58%

If you wanted to keep raw material usage similar then you could produce around 3x as many green matrices though power and coal usage would be much higher

[DanTheMan]

Yes yes yes. All sprays are worth it.

[DanTheMan]

Originally posted by Dragonmaster:

^ pretty much. Don’t bother with 1 but 2-3 yes. As for what to spray, matrixes are priority 1 followed by the more rougher intermediates early game. Only do ore and base level mats when you get to the end game.
And always fuel as it makes it last longer and most cases speeds up how fast it charges the mecha

Mk1 is still worth it, especially on low resources. there is plenty of coal to go around, and ideally you should be getting power from wind and solar.

[captainamaziiing]

I ran a few tests a while back, just various production chains with and without spray coaters. I don't recall any of the numbers to quote, but it's an overwhelming yes. Coal is abundant for tier 1. Coal makes all the ingredients for T2 as well. By the time you are ready for blue paint you should have a supply line for the rare element that makes carbon nanotubes, so they are effectively very cheap. but painting your ore before smelting, then painting your bars before turning into gears, then painting the gears before they go into the motors, then painting the motors before they go into green motors, and again for the blue motors and by the time you are putting blue motors into your doohickeys, you have several times as many products as if you had never sprayed. The further up your production chain you go, the bigger that number gets.

[teron]

One of the best things to paint is the paint due to the fact that it gives extra charges.

[pemmons1]

While it is true that the benefit of Mk.1 proliferation is marginal, I see no reason not to use it. First, you should plan for proliferation infrastructure from Day 1, then get at least some of the spray coaters in place as soon as research allows it (although the silicon needed to make them is probably scarce as long as you are limited to the home planet,) Second, you need to produce Mk.1 proliferator before producing Mk.2. So these facilities are good to get going in advance. Third, when upgrading to Mk.2 (or from 2 to 3), you can collect the obsolete type from the coaters and belts and put it back into the production process. Nothing will go to waste.

Each successive version of proliferator, in addition to being more effective, can treat more products per unit consumed. This may be the strongest argument for upgrading from Mk.2 to 3.

When the only benefit possible is production speedup, proliferation might not be worthwhile.
These cases include most buildings that are upgrades to other buildings-- mk. 2 belts, for example, for which a mk.1 belt is an input. Just put the two assemblers next to each other in your mall, the first feeding into the second as well as into storage. You are probably not interested in maximum speed, so you lose nothing. Another case is critical photons, which a
particle collider can convert to anti-matter. These are extraordinarily power-hungry machines, such that it is probably more efficient not to overclock them with proliferated input.

[nevryn]

Worth noting with elements like belts and sorters, is that to get the effect from spraying the other ingredients you have to spray it input belt/sorter or you don't get the multiplier. All ingredients must be sprayed otherwise it doesn't count.