What's the point of steam sawmill?

[Panfilo]

It generates less wood than a wall drill and you'll have to periodically reposition it like you would a regular sawmill. It requires a steam core and I believe is at the same tech tier as a wall drill. What am I missing here?

I mean compare this with the options you get for coal - Coal Thumper doesn't need a steam core but needs gathering posts to get the coal. Upgrade it to a steam coal thumper and plop down a few more gathering posts. OR you can spend more steam cores for a coal Mine that will be more efficient to run late game with upgraded automatons. Both choices are good.

But the steam sawmill just seems like a waste, why not just get a wall drill?

[Bobywan]

only difference is steam core.
In some cases, you may need to use wall drill + saw mill, for instance if you plan to use charcoal kin.

[Panfilo]

But steam sawmill and wall drill both use a steam core, right? And steam sawmill is 120/day vs wall drill 200/day I believe. So unless I'm wrong wall drill is flat out better.

You could make the argument there that you can have both running, sure. But unlike doing this kind of thing with coal, there's a finite amount of trees on maps,and I'm not sure if each tree represents a particular amount of wood to be harvested. If you started with sawmills early on, you'll have already exhausted quite a bit of forest on some maps already.

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Steam sawmill like the steam coal thumper does not require a steam core. It also has better insulation than the regular sawmill which can be handy if you don't want to build a steam hub for just one building.

Don't build them for maps with few trees, they are very useful in The Builders endless mode because you need more wood than normal and have no steam hubs.