ARC Smelter VS Blast furnace

[megaxiphias]

I have a setup with only one blast furnace conected to the casting bin, and noticed that it consumes 32 ores to make 1 bar, where the ARC smelter only consumes 16 ores to make 1 bar (This if for chrome and moly), does the blast furnace get more efficient if you add more blast furnace to it? Or is it just alot faster :P

[MalloryMcGuffin]

Nope - 32 for 1 is as good as it gets. But much faster and less energy. The only real solution is to suck it up and build more Trenchers (and only bother to exploit T4 ore patches larger than 5M or you'll always be moving them.

[Bob]

I also discourage arc spamming. since the last updates it is super expensive and consumes more power and time per operation then the blast furnace

[megaxiphias]

Ah alright, found an old thread about it also :P and yup, it seems like that, suck it up and build more :D time to go find those mega veins!

[Nialscorva]

ARC smelter takes about 25% more energy to smelt the same number of bars, in addition to the non-trivial amount of resources to make the 6+ Arc Smelters needed to equal one Blast Furnace. Blast Furnace trades ore per bar for speed and power efficiency.

The leap from T1 Trencher to T3 Trencher isn't as far as from T3 to T4 ores, in my experience, and that eliminates most of the downside.

[MalloryMcGuffin]

Find mega veins by going deeper - my FF mistake was building my first mining base at 730, should have been 920 - much bigger veins.

[Timeslice]

Originally posted by MalloryMcGuffin:

Find mega veins by going deeper - my FF mistake was building my first mining base at 730, should have been 920 - much bigger veins.

This... so much. If only I'd scanned a little deeper.

[Suros:/#]

I haven't seen a single T4 ore vein over 2.5m yet and I'm running around at -1000m. Is it better around 900m or am I just unlucky with ore gen? It's been so bad that I'm resorting to arc spam.

[Demerzel]

Originally posted by Suros# Linux:

I haven't seen a single T4 ore vein over 2.5m yet and I'm running around at -1000m. Is it better around 900m or am I just unlucky with ore gen? It's been so bad that I'm resorting to arc spam.

You are unlucky

[Suros:/#]

Originally posted by Demerzel:

You are unlucky

Guess I'll bust out the BFL and dig some long tunnels then. Really getting tired of moving all of my equipment for a hand full of bars.

[Jonathan]

My morning : I built a whole down to -960. Used workfloor excavators to build a "base of operation". Then activated 2 BFL3000 in 2 directions (90' from each others). Let them go for 5-10 minutes. Then start walking in those tunnels.


Tunnel #1 : whitin the tunnel, without using a single scan, I had 19m and 20m Chrome veins.
Tunnel #2 has a 16m Moly vein.

All "pretty close" to base. Without "looking carefully" (those werethe obvious ones). Without scanning (I might have gone just by some bigger ones...).

[dendavid]

You can also use the MK2 auto excavator mod to clear large area's, and power them with the infite power cube mod. That way you can see the veins and have more space for your setup. And you can plan your setup a lot easier.
I use those mods only to clear the garbage over 100m width and 64m height, it takes some time but it's so usefull.

[Suros:/#]

Originally posted by dendavid:

You can also use the MK2 auto excavator mod to clear large area's, and power them with the infite power cube mod. That way you can see the veins and have more space for your setup. And you can plan your setup a lot easier.
I use those mods only to clear the garbage over 100m width and 64m height, it takes some time but it's so usefull.

That feels pretty cheaty to me. It's not like WFEs are that expensive to make or run, and running a power line to the underground isn't too bad either. If I want to go up I just rig a 3x3 power grid and fire auto excavators all over the ceiling. Just my opinion on the matter.

[Jonathan]

I'm no fan of mods.
Dev created obstacles for me to deal with.
I'll deal with 'em.
:)

[Timeslice]

I like the mods that add features that should already be in the game, such as filtered logistic FALCOR and the paint gun remembering your settings between saves.