Mine ore and smelt onsite or smelt at large site away from ore site?

[Rottenflesh142]

Let me have it.

[Alty]

Depends n your setup but it would be better to smelt at a large site and if you want make more then one smelting site and expand like a god!

[astrosha]

Generally speaking, it is more time efficient to smelt away from the mines.

Once you get to the point you want rail to deliver stuff, you'll find it easier to set up a mining site that loads the ore onto a train. Then you can make one smelting facility and connect as many mining sites as you want to it via rail.

Its up to you if you want to do the smelting at the head of your bus, or some offsite location.

[Morsk]

I like to smelt at mines. It saves a lot of trains, and also means not having to design a central smelter, and not having to find space for it in the factory.

It's not only 50 ore vs. 100 plate on trains, but 50 ore + 50 ore + 100 plate in 3 trains, vs. 1 train with 100 plate. On steel it's even more than this.

[astrosha]

Its a matter of taste. Smelting at the mine means having to not only move the mining operation, but the smelters as well, when a mining site runs dry.

Centralized smelting allows you to connect, via rail, any number of mines to the one smelting facility, which can be expanded upon as needed.

The drawbacks are 2 stacks of ore per stack of plates, and 10 stacks of ore per stack of steel. Thus, the matter of taste : more efficient smelting, or more efficient materials transfer with a need to move the smelting around.

[Nailfoot]

I used to smelt at the mines (on-site) because it was infinitely expandable. There was no upper limit to how much plate I could produce.

Now, I smelt centrally. It's much easier to manage. Also, it's almost trivial to set up a furnace arrangement that can produce 50k plates a minute or more.

As long as you design your furanace area with at least two stations to unload ore, and at least two stations to load the plate, I can see 75k plates per minute or more as a throughput upper limit.

75k plates a minute will power a huge mega base. Need more?

Blueprint the whole thing and build another one!!

[AlexMBrennan]

It's not only 50 ore vs. 100 plate on trains, but 50 ore + 50 ore + 100 plate in 3 trains, vs. 1 train with 100 plate. On steel it's even more than this.

Unfortunately it's not quite that simple - having dozens of stations producing iron plates, and dozens of stations requesting iron plates will be a nightmare to manage without a central depot of some kind.

Specifically, trains can't wait at the unloading station because other trains might be delivering iron plates and they can't wait at loading stations because you can't be sure that any loading stations will be available - you need a central depot, and if you have a central depot then you might as well do the smelting there to avoid having to move the smelters around all the time.

[Rottenflesh142]

Be kind to each other please. I "see" in my mind both ways of doing this. Just haven't smashed the numbers. If I could retire tomorrow I know wahat I'd do for the next week or two. TY for the replys.

[teravisor]

Simple evolutionary way:
At first mine you start building furnaces in expandable way. Later you upgrade them. After mine drains it becomes furnace hub you bring ore to and can expand infinitely.
Reason is simple, you don't have to remake ore smelting every time mine drains. The only thing you remake are mines and rails.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by Senpai-kun:

Concrete takes unsmelted iron ore. Stone and Steel furnaces need burner fuel to function. These are my biggest reasons for not smelting at the mine. It's just logistically simpler to gather everything in one place before doing what you need with it.

By the time you are smelting on a large scale, usually electric furnaces are involved. Fuel is not a concern. I make concrete via robots, so it doesn't matter where the source of ore is.

Originally posted by teravisor:

Simple evolutionary way:
At first mine you start building furnaces in expandable way. Later you upgrade them. After mine drains it becomes furnace hub you bring ore to and can expand infinitely.
Reason is simple, you don't have to remake ore smelting every time mine drains. The only thing you remake are mines and rails.

Its trivial to remake furnance arrays with bots and blueprints. I smelt in one location as well, but only because it makes train routing simpler. I couldn't care less about rebuilding furnace arrays when you can do it in a minute or less with your bot army!

[THE kilroy]

A centralized system is and requires more organization, but can be more efficient in many ways. A distributed system requires more attention and correction but has the benefit of not restricting other systems, only the ones its involved in.

Typically early game i recommend onsite as belts with ore are usless but a belt of iron, can be usefull. But later in the game centralized can give you larger outputs with less frustration.

However! Both can be done for any scale and any proccess.

[Wolfrages]

Starting to become comfortable with outpost mining as default options in late game cause you to move further and further away from your base.

I personally, have a main bus that is connected to a large train station. The trains are running on one way, side by side rails for two way traffic.

The Iron, Copper, Steel and Stone all have further out smelting outposts. This is to minimize the amount of traffic going into my base, and the fact that the smelters keep getting push futher out. So having a dedicated line running back to my base with just plates for example is great.

The Stone smelter and the Iron Ore smelter have a single car on one of the lines left just for stone or iron ore, for the said example you will need it to make rails and concrete.

Past the smelters, I have Many mining outposts, going on 12 or more now, that have dedicated ore to smelter lines, also, if the outpost is near more of the same ore, I will conveyor the ore to that site and just put up tower like defences around it.

TL:DR Do what feel comfy to you.

[MisterSpock]

I had over 15 mining sites in my last megabase game. And it was a smallish one.

Smelting where you mine just for reducing traffic amount, doesnt sound that great.

I have over 500 furnances in my base. Dividing them into 15 outposts would require much more than 500 furnances. Because outpots are diffrent size and losing throughput by time. This really sound like chaos for me.
Building a smelting array is not that difficult. I usually dont deliver my metal with trains, instead they go directly from my furnance into my factory via belts.

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