Is there any use for hoppers?

[I'm Mr. Meseeks, look at me!ݴ]

It seems to me like hoppers increase the amount of effort to use machines in every situation. You could just use the extra space and time you get by not making hoppers to put twice the machines and have to come back to use them half as many times. It seems like its always more optimal to just add a chest in a room with more machines just to hold the stuff to be processed. Also with many hoppers you need to evenly divide everything you're putting in.

Is there any valid use or they're just worthless and expensive? Not sure what to do with radioactive ore and bars besides galaxy souls I guess.

[Queen Droxxanna]

I have mine set up to feed Behind the hopper, and I have used it beside the hopper too, and used it that way even before I started to mod. And as far as I know none of my mods effect the hopper.

[Zero Thousand]

It could be changed by now, but no: the hopper does only feed directly in front (below) it. Wiki says the same thing, as well as in-game description. You probably used a mod without knowing, or like i said, a change.

It annoys me that 2 years later it still has no real use for vanilla.

[Maya-Neko]

It definitely has a real use, not only when it came out, but still up to this point. I regularly use them to reduce the workload by a lot. Without them you need to take stuff out of a chest, put everything into the machines and then put the rest of the stack back. With the hopper you just run past it holding the grab button and that's it.

Might not be useful for everyone, especially for those who doesn't care about having 2 additional steps, but the QoL-effect is definitely there if you want to use it.

[Ryika]

The hopper is in that weird middle ground where it clearly does have utility, but it's not something that many people would feel like a significant "step up". It's really expensive, and then just doesn't do THAT much.

I feel like it would work better if it worked as semi-automation, putting items into the thing in front and, as an optional extra function, also pulling them out back into their own inventory. It's probably good that the game doesn't focus toooo much on all-out automation (people who want that will use the automation-mod anyway), but I feel like by the time you can realistically have a bunch of hoppers, grabbing stuff out of your furnaces has lost its charm anyway.

[God of Snacks]

I personally find hoppers aren't any different than manually loading the machines. If there was a grabber that collected from machines like it grabs from animals, it'd be great. But there isn't, so meh.

[Prince Persona]

Heavy Furnace and Dehydrator

Since both require multiples of items and the dehydrator itself requires 5 of the same quality you can just throw bulk items into the chest and let the machine sort out what to make.

[kingjames488]

to make coffee. kinda a pain going and getting the beans every time.

[Keeper Of Monsters]

Messaggio originale di Mod_Abuse_victim#488:

to make coffee. kinda a pain going and getting the beans every time.

Sort of valid...
And yet - I'd rather have twice as many kegs and run alongside them picking and reloading at the same time vs having hoppers take space (and extra space behind them for access for loading too!) and extra clicking (and logistics of dividing bean stocks) to fill those hoppers.

[TamanduaGirl]

I use the hoppers to make it passive late game. Just fill hoppers with ore and then I grab a smelted bar each time I'm in the shed, which is once or twice a day. Lots of time saved in the long run of not needing to grab and feed an ore each time.

Kind of like the crystalarium make one diamond a day. Just collect them with morning chores.

But yeah if you need a bunch at once it wont do much for you. It's about planning ahead.