New Player Question about Smelter Bottleneck

[ExpendableGrunt]

So, after playing for a couple of days, I admit that I still haven't scratched the surface of FCE. I'm playing on the default survival world settings, and the built-in smelter bottleneck seems to really stifle gameplay.

Specifically, I've researched many things to build, but few of them are of any use to me. Ore Extractor upgrades are useless, since the starting smelter can't handle the ores I'm bringing in already. That has a domino effect in stifling progression: No point upgrading conveyor belts, Ore Thief is a waste of power/materials, and no need to upgrade power transfer or storage. I could wait patiently for smelting and devote all my resources into research, but that's just going to send me out exploring for Tier 2 ores.

So now I'm at a point where I've got Copper, Tin, Iron, and Lithium coming in, but no sign of Organic Rock to build basic smelters. I've got tons of tech that I'm not building since it won't help me at all. My base hasn't really changed since I got it up and running.

I admit that I am probably missing something major. But am I right in thinking that you simply can't start building a real base until you've spent hours exploring first?

[Alpha]

have you made a mk2 forced induction? They are really great, particularly in the beginning when you only have one smelter!
You can find organic rock by heading towards the corners of the map, towards the big overminds. You should be able to find some in the soft resin there!

[ExpendableGrunt]

Originally posted by Alpha:

have you made a mk2 forced induction?

That seems to be the next step while I look for Organic Rock. Thanks.

[John Hadley]

The smelter bottleneck is there to compel you to advance to tier two. You can build more smelters once you reach tier two.

To get to tier two you need to dig down to 200m and get a sample of the frozen rock just below there so that you can research cold technology. Once you research that you can build a suit heater to keep you from freezing within a matter of seconds in the frozen cavern. You need to dig below the frozen cavern to find the tier two ores. I think the frozen cavern is from 200m to 280m. You'll also want to build the suit battery mk1 before going down there. Get below 280m and find the tier two ores. I think you'll find them all before the toxic cavern at 450m which requires another suit upgrade to survive.

[atiaxi]

Additionally, the frozen cavern has Camo-Bots: These are mobs that look like regular blocks, but will move when you're not looking. They're not hostile unless you shoot them first, but they will try to attach themselves to any power storage blocks and siphon off the power.

The important part about this for you is that they drop organic rock when they die, so it becomes a renewable source of the stuff.

[Name Lips]

I think the issue is that new players like myself and ExpendableGrunt don't see the value in slowing down the base-building. What about the organic rock requirement makes the game better?

[pHredric]

Originally posted by Name Lips:

I think the issue is that new players like myself and ExpendableGrunt don't see the value in slowing down the base-building. What about the organic rock requirement makes the game better?

Organic rocks are quite easy to find once you know where to look, the trick is to finding caves, even those close to surface will sometimes work. I can have basic smelters set up within one or two hours. More basic smelters = higher smelter speed until you are able to make regular smelters such as the one you start with.

[Hiddey]

New player here as well. I am unable to find organic rock. I did find a huge tentacle monster but found nothing when I tried to scan there.

[Dodgeball]

Organic rock appears in caves, but it can be hit or miss on how easily you find it. Once you have a suit heater to survive the cold caverns, it's a bit easier to come by: at and below the cold caverns, you'll find camo bots that drop a few organic rock when you defeat them. You can either manually blast them down, or set up some turrets and draw them into range. Camo bots like to spawn where there's open space: they'll spawn plentifully in the cold caverns but to get them to come out below (and not burn through so much energy staying warm), you'll want to find or carve out a nice wide open area.

[ExpendableGrunt]

OMG. I just found out that I have a gun. That might be a nice addition to the tutorial.

[atiaxi]

The hotkey for the gun is V: I remember it as "V for 'Violence'" :)

[ExpendableGrunt]

I can't belive I've been playing the game for a week without knowing there was a gun. Ironically, I never had to look at the key bindings because the tutorial does such a decent job introducing concepts and controls.

[Name Lips]

I discovered the gun by accident too. :P

I've started several games to try to get a feel for the game, and in only one of them was organic rock in any way easy to find. The others I've spent hours spider-manning through caves and been lucky to find one or two blocks of it.

Honestly all I want to do is set up an automated line for smelting copper, tin, iron, and lithium. I want 4 refineries in a nice, neat pattern.

I know -eventually- I'll find lots of organic rock. It just seems odd to force new players to use a single, good furnace they get for free instead of letting them build slow, inefficient furnaces on their own. Why not an entry level furnace? We have entry-level conveyers and laser transmitters...

[Name Lips]

OK I've been reading a bit of old posts and the wiki.

I think the game assumes you're going to spend some time without really wanting a lot of smelters. The soft resin (and thereby organic rock) that I'm looking for only starts to appear in quantity when tunnel nukers start spawning. Tunnel nukers spawn from overminds, head toward your base, and if they encounter rock/obsticles they explode, destroying the rocks and leaving soft resin behind. Soft resin is where you find organic rock. But until this starts happening, soft resin is very rare and difficult to find. I don't know when tunnel nukers start spawning, but I'm wasting my time starting a game and looking for good organic rock areas right away -- they simply won't be there yet.

It looks like early game you're not expected to fully automate much -- if any -- of your base. I've been giving myself a headache trying. You're supposed to spend a lot of time running around charging your mining areas, picking up ore, taking it home to be refined, and building a collection of bars. Then you're supposed to be exploring to get research, and upgrading your suit and Arthur with everything that only requires iron, copper, tin, and lithium to build. This will enable further exploration possiblities (the ice caverns) and probably the tunnel nukers will have started spawning and leaving soft resin for you to find. THAT'S when you start getting organic rock and automating your base.

[steveman0]

There's plenty you can automate early on with just the starting smelter. On default settings you can feed every ore to it and it should cope with them until you've upgraded the drill motors a few times.

You'll want extra smelters eventually but there is a lot to prepare prior to t2 that you shouldn't worry too much about getting them operational immediately. Installing lifts, running power lines down to and below the cold caverns, finding each t2 ores, and setting up basic research can all be done before worrying too much about ramping up production.

In that time you might come across a dozen organic rocks in caves so you don't even need to worry about the tunnel nukers. When it does come time to ramp up if you've been making appropriate steps in other regards it will be easy to lay down several smelters and crank up throughput quickly. The smelters are cheap so although you may feel limited by the starting smelter at first the basic smelters aren't your bottleneck for long before your logistics takes precedence so don't let that fall behind in an effort to focus on organic rock.

[DjArcas]

Originally posted by ExpendableGrunt:

I can't belive I've been playing the game for a week without knowing there was a gun. Ironically, I never had to look at the key bindings because the tutorial does such a decent job introducing concepts and controls.

I'm gonna damned well print this out and frame it. <3

The gun is a hard one to introduce; all of the tutorial stuff is super-context sensitive, but a player might run into a slime in 10 seconds, or not for 10 hours. It's a hard one to add in.