Changing ore to bar ratio

[Comatoads]

I have found the file to edit the amount of ore required to make one bar and after editing this has made no difference what so ever. Is it actually possible to change the ratio beyond the numbers that come with difficulty settings? I want it to be easier less than 4 ore per bar.

[Lions_Den]

At the moment that file is basically a place holder as that stuff is still hardcoded in the game. At least I haven't heard of it's changing and I usually check the patch notes so I have some clue what is happening.

[CrazyJoe]

That would be nice, but it would be rather unrealistic. If you look at modern iron smelting. a truck load of ore would result in about 1/3 of it being iron and the rest would be slag. So the 4 ore to 1 bar is about right. also i have found in many games that has metal working, that the amount of ore to metal bars is a 3 or 4 to 1 ratio. just be glad you do not have to deal with the slag. that stuff can be nasty. it is almost volcanic glass.

[Mazetar]

Someone can probably make a mod to do that, or one could adjust the cost of everything to 1/4th the bar count.

But on plentiful you are really quickly swimming in bars,
are you sure you can use them 4 times as quick?
except for like in the first 3 hours of the game.

[CosmoJaeger]

Another thing you need to consider is yeah. You need less ore per bar, but time per bar will still be the same in most cases. So youll end up with a buttload of ores, that You cannot use for anything. (This is what annoys me with plentiful, when being used to play Scarce, is that I have more ores than I can process)

[Comatoads]

I understand whay everyone is saying but ive logged 30 hours and I still have one furnace and struggle to collect more than 20 bars at a time what am I doing wrong LOL

[Decagon]

Originally posted by mattkeogh:

I understand whay everyone is saying but ive logged 30 hours and I still have one furnace and struggle to collect more than 20 bars at a time what am I doing wrong LOL

Are you making sure to use Forced Inductions? If not, you'll find 'em in the same menu as the extractor, and are placed on top of the Smelter. That'll speed up the amount of ore the thing processes in a shorter timespan at the cost of more energy used.

[Lions_Den]

Have you gotten the nickel ore?

Have you research alloys yet?

Have you gotten the smelter recipe (and not the basic smelter recipe)?

You will be able to make more smelters. You just need to get titanium and nickel and research some stuff in the lab.

[Comatoads]

yeah i have them but by the time the furnace smelts I need something else so im back at square one with not enough resources. The only cure I can see if to just linger at the furnace smelting large amounts until i stock pile which sounds so boring

[Comatoads]

My research station is painfully slow. Because i cant smelt the ores quick enough to make the materials. it took me 2 hours just sitting here filling the furnace and waiting for everything. Then once all those where gone i was poor again. I physically need more ore to progress but I need the research im stuck in a loop

[Lions_Den]

I play slow but it sounds like you are really playing slow unless you aren't on plentiful resources.

What I did was ignore the lab in the beginning, focus on getting copper, tin and iron. Once I have those I get bars and create basic conveyors to and hoppers to take the ore from the extractors to the smelter with a regular storage hopper on the input and one on the output. The slow conveyors help with the mix of ores coming in to the input hopper. the input hopper needs to be set to remove only and the output hopper needs to be set to add only.

Once I have enough bars I make some more hoppers and using basic conveyors I attach them to the output of the smelter so I can get three or four hundred bars smelted for me while I do other things. I research and make the basic suit and arther stuff to give me more range and abilities.

Next I find lithium and and start mining some. I carry it up with me and set the input hopper to locked and when the smelter is empty I place one hundred lithium ore in and get some bars. I then change the input hopper back to remove only. I go power up some extractors again and when I come back I grab the lithium bars and whatever else has been smelted for me.

I then keep doing this until I have enough bars to make enough LPTs to start powering my copper and tin and iron extractors. When I have enough to power lithium as well, I do that one too. I then add more storage hoppers to my lithium extractor, the hoppers will balance ore between themselves so I don't need conveyors yet. This way I go down and grab lithium once and a while.

My next step is to make the lab and do a little research. Once the lab is researching, I go down to the cold caverns and get some of the stone there and run back up to identify it and research the suit heater and make it. I then hunt up the nickel, gold and titanium and place some extractors down with a hopper each. I feed them power manually and run up and down smelting stuff. I get the alloys research and learn the smelter recipe.

Things really start to take off then. I have to craft some weapons and place them because my threat is about to go up. I make PTGs and smelters and start making lines for each bar type with hoppers to quickly get bars. I place power lines to the nickel, gold and titanium and also start placing turret covered conveyors to lithium, gold, nickel and titanium. I just keep increasing my weapons and my smelting and my research. So far I haven't charged an OET but I am at the point that I could just about make one and charge it and survive without using any missiles at all.

Hope my path helps you out some. The early game is very slow unless you craft basic smelters but those require more power and more ore per bar so I don't use them.

[Cellfire]

Originally posted by mattkeogh:

it took me 2 hours just sitting here filling the furnace and waiting for everything.

if your standing their feeding ore into the smelters hopper you may want to think about automating some ore with belts.


you can also hopefully build basic smelters by now. That will smelt more bars for you too.

[Mazetar]

A new setting called casual is being added, it's on BE atm.

Added Casual Resources - 1 ore per bar, double speed smelter. Designed for those with jobs and children. This also gives a 'starter pack' of Storage Hoppers, Lasers and Power Storage Blocks. This should make the start-game go past extremely quickly. Not recommended unless you've already played the game on a harder difficulty tho!

As cellfire noted in another post, it might be meant to be 2 ore per bar because that's how it is in-game atm.

[Mithious]

Originally posted by mattkeogh:

I understand whay everyone is saying but ive logged 30 hours and I still have one furnace and struggle to collect more than 20 bars at a time what am I doing wrong LOL

Last time I did a run through I had tier two smelting going within about 5 hours. 30 hours and one smelter means you're doing something very wrong.

[DjArcas]

Originally posted by mattkeogh:

I have found the file to edit the amount of ore required to make one bar and after editing this has made no difference what so ever. Is it actually possible to change the ratio beyond the numbers that come with difficulty settings? I want it to be easier less than 4 ore per bar.

Choose 'Casual' difficulty if you're on Bleeding Edge. ;)

[DjArcas]

Originally posted by mattkeogh:

I understand whay everyone is saying but ive logged 30 hours and I still have one furnace and struggle to collect more than 20 bars at a time what am I doing wrong LOL

Well, the first thing you're doing wrong is to not post any pictures... what's your bottleneck? What type of drill heads do you have? Is everything automated?