Blast Furnace inefficiency

[HD Payne]

I was excited to get to creating the blast furnace and casting basin, I placed it down in the cold caverns at my climate control base and set up some infrastructure to ferry ore to it and bars away by lift.

Then I found that it consumes twice as many ore as the arc smelter. I assume this is intentional as a trade off for being able to make bars more quickly as well as being inexpensive compared to the 256 alloyed blocks for the arc smelter addon.

I figure it was meant to encourage the player to scale up throughput to get molybdenum and chromium ore, but considering how large a waste of t4 resources it seems to be, has anyone decided to stick with the arc smelter instead? Seeing such an inefficient upgrade was really demoralizing, especially after witnessing how neat the new setup looked in the cold caverns.

Does the blast furnace just need time to 'warm up' and become more efficient, or is it always going to use 32:1 bar compared to 16:1?

[Elusive]

In the latest beta, the arc smelter has been nerfed to be less efficient.

However. I've been playing on rush mode, latest stable. Even with the nerf, I would stick to the arc smelter, on rush mode, at least. The blast furnace takes 3.5 seconds for bar, the arc smelter takes 5. However, the arc smelter is many dozens of times more space efficient. Since you would already benefit a lot from automating mk5 induction, arc smelters seems significantly better. Set up automation, come back, have about 50 made. Spam them, and you have the output of multiple furnaces + basins, and you can use the form factors of your existing above-ground infrastructure, too.

[DRBN]

What's the ratio now ?

[HD Payne]

I'm playing default difficulty, 16:1 ore:bar for the arc smelter and 32:1 for the blast furnace.

Gotta say I think making upgrades less efficient is a game design faux pas, I feel cheated on this after having expectations of grandeur for a new furnace device. Even having an identical ratio to the arc smelters would have been fine since I could make them faster and cheaper, but this may be where I stop playing at least for a while. That or idle until I get a few thousand alloyed blocks built up and figure out how to clear the cryoplasm later.

[Jonathan]

I agree that the difference should be bigger.

The way I see it, Arc Smelther are meant to be a "in between". To help you get what you need to get a Blast Furnace.

Now I have mine. It is fast..... but **** me it uses a lot of Ores.

But it's fast !



It innitially took so much time to gather 200 bars...

I built my shafts from Chromium to Cold Caverns and Moly to Cold Caverns.
Then I set Tier-2 cargo lifts on both shafts.
Connecte a Tencher on Moly and Chrom.

Then I built my Continuous Basin and linked 2 Blast Furnaces (1 for Chrom, 1 for Moly).
Used a massive mass of pipes and hoppers to ensue that the lifts would empty itself and get the ores to the Blast Furnaces ASAP.

Then I connected a 2nd vein of Chrom and Moly to both of their respective lifts.

Now, I get.... like.... 1000 bars of each type every hour.

All 4 trenchers (2 Chrom, 2 Moly) work continuously, non stop. nothing anywhere manages to ever "accumulate". I'm thinking about getting a 3rd Trechers on each type of Ores to have a chance to "flood" my production line.




Arc smelther are slower... but also take longer to load the 16 ores. And I'd need to take the ores to the surface (-915 ----> 0 = a very long lift ride !). The installation to get sure the hopper(s) feeding the Smelther always have enough ores would be quite clumsy.

BUT, if you're one to leave your server online while you go to bed and go to work..... Ark Smelther would produce better results at the end of the day. Yes.











To be clear on my point of view, though : I think that the Blast Furnace if slightly better. (and officially a lot more awesome to operate). But "slithgly better" is the problem here. That's not enough. I'd like it to rock my world. It is supposed to be the ultimate smelthing solution so... yeah. I'm not sure how. But I'd like it to be even better. SPECIALLY compared to Arc Smelther. (I'm fine with nerfing the Arc. It would make the BF look better. Maybe... JUST MAYBE, a *SLIGHT* boost to the BF as well would be nice)

[Elusive]

> But I'd like it to be even better. SPECIALLY compared to Arc Smelther.

I agree with that too. I don't care about it being wasteful, I care about it being SLOW. It needs to be many times faster than the arc smelter to be able to justify the investment in time for building the infrastructure compared to the arc smelter.

[SekiSelu]

On "Sparse" it's even worse. 32 ore per bar in the Arc Smelter, 128 per bar in the Blast Furnace.

I've watched tens of millions of ore disappear down the blast furnace hole in order to make a single filter. It's pretty rough.

[epgeek]

Isn't it 64 ore per bar on scarce? I know on scarce the ARC is 32 ore, and it only outputs 3 bars per minute, same as a regular un-inducted smelter.

[MalloryMcGuffin]

I can't see a reason to make blast furnaces worse - I'm getting fed up moving trenchers about just to keep one of them fed - supporting two would be really dull. I suspect this is because it takes too many bars need for the particulate filters needed for the stuff for level 2 trencher research

[Jonathan]

Originally posted by MalloryMcGuffin:

I can't see a reason to make blast furnaces worse - I'm getting fed up moving trenchers about just to keep one of them fed - supporting two would be really dull. I suspect this is because it takes too many bars need for the particulate filters needed for the stuff for level 2 trencher research

I might be wrong... But there's no mention of making BFs worst.

- nerfing arc smelghers (already planned by dev)
- boosting the BFs (asked by players)

[MalloryMcGuffin]

Sorry - not clear - should be "worse than arc smelters". Include me in the boost BF camp.

[TheQuixote]

Originally posted by THE EMO:

I'm playing default difficulty, 16:1 ore:bar for the arc smelter and 32:1 for the blast furnace.

Gotta say I think making upgrades less efficient is a game design faux pas, I feel cheated on this after having expectations of grandeur for a new furnace device. Even having an identical ratio to the arc smelters would have been fine since I could make them faster and cheaper, but this may be where I stop playing at least for a while. That or idle until I get a few thousand alloyed blocks built up and figure out how to clear the cryoplasm later.

This.....

The rates are either backwards or this game is just flat out pandering to masochists.

A real "F' this, time for a different game" experience.

[Jonathan]

Originally posted by TheQuixote:

This.....

The rates are either backwards or this game is just flat out pandering to masochists.

A real "F' this, time for a different game" experience.

I agree that it is not as good as it should be.
Those numbers are horrible. Yes.
It should receive a slight upgrade of some sort.

But it's not a game breaker.

Once you get into Froze Factory, you shohld have plenty of ressources and means to get more.

2 trenchers with a proper transport tube setup and tier2 cargo lifts should allow for a constant stream of ores and your Blast Furnace should manage work continuously and produce a bar ever 3 seconds-ish. That's pretty fast.

The only problem Is the speed at which you will burn through veins. At least untill you get T2 trensher drills, qhich will help a little.

As I said, I agree that it needs to be fine-tuned.
But as it is, it's really not as bad as it sounds once you actually deal with it.
But it does need a fine-tune.

[TheQuixote]

Or I'll just move all the ores to the surface, which is what this encourages. The Frozen Depot, where the ores switch elevators.

[Jonathan]

Molybeum and chromium can't be made into bar in normal smelthers unless you put a arc upgrade on it.... Whcih make it very, very slow. And the arc smelther costs a LOOOOOOOOT of mats.

You can do that.

But it'll slow you down. Big time. Much more then "looking for a new vein".

[Fwiffo]

A buff (at the very least a slight buff) to the blast furnace seems reasonable, at the moment it does kinda seem like a slight downgrade rather than an upgrade...