Steel Furnaces Pointless - Dev's Please Fix

[Cavalier Roy]

I have always seen the steel furnaces as a waste of material, its easy enough to research and advanced material processing 2 and go from stone to electric furnaces without ever building a single steel furnace. If for example the steel furnaces was used as part of the recipe for electric furnaces then i would happily hold off pushing to elecric and build them but for now i see the steel furnaces as pointless and a total waste of material.

[NimrodAbsolution⁧⁧98]

Steel furnaces don't draw power, that is both an advantage and a disadvantage
But yes i do agree they should be incorperated into the steal furnace recipe

[KatherineOfSky]

Steel furnaces are not pointless -- they fill a gap between smelting speed and over-production of power.

Electric furnaces consume a HUGE amount of electricity, as well as requite significant resources to make en mass. Steel furnaces allow you to increase smelting speed if you have sufficient coal or solid fuel supplies.

They don't need "fixing".

[Zaphod]

I agree with Kat, i usually have a long period building up generators or solar, and steel furnaces are noticeably faster than stone ones...

[T-Bone Biggins]

Electric furnaces are expensive as a mofo to build, their main benefit is you don't need to feed a fuel line to keep the furnaces burning thus lowering footprint and simplifying your smelting facilities. I often stick to steel furnaces for a good while until I am at that point of automating blue research most of the time, I don't know depends on how I feel each game. If I can keep cranking out solid fuel/coal and the lines are in place and efficient I just leave them be often enough, the benefit to switching to electric in that situation would be minimal since you have to tear up and lay down new lines that were already working without any input.

[The_Mell]

You fix bugs - game design and balance are changed or improved.
First one is an objective thing because an error is something 'hard' and nothing to discuss about.
Second one is subjective because it's something 'soft' and more about likes&dislikes and an idea about how the game should feel.

Someone dislikes steel furnaces and would prefer not to waste the resources put into those by recycling them - that's fine. You've got the right to have an opinion.
But demanding a fix...really..?


I'm on my 2nd playthrough and hunting down quite some achievements with it. Lots of coal available, base powered by only 20 steam engines and not a single electric furnace.
So what's the point of them?
Devs fix electric furnaces..?

[The_Pastmaster]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

Steel furnaces are not pointless -- they fill a gap between smelting speed and over-production of power.

Electric furnaces consume a HUGE amount of electricity, as well as requite significant resources to make en mass. Steel furnaces allow you to increase smelting speed if you have sufficient coal or solid fuel supplies.

They don't need "fixing".

Not to mention that you can fit in three steel furnaces with inserters in the same space as just two electric furnaces without inserters.

[Timi]

Originally posted by The_Pastmaster:

Not to mention that you can fit in three steel furnaces with inserters in the same space as just two electric furnaces without inserters.

But once you get modules in the electric furnaces, those two will produce more than the three steel furnaces will towards the endgame.

[Cavalier Roy]

what i meant by please fix, is make it so the steel furnace is used in the elecric furnace recipe. I understand a lot of people like to use the steel furnace and some never bother to upgrade to eletric furnaces.

I always plan for the electric furnaces right from the get go, so my furnace setup is easy to switch to electric as soon as its unlocked. This is why i don't go to steel furnaces and see them as pointless, the disadvange to electric furnaces might be power consumption but by this point i normally producing more than enough power ready for them and the advantages to electric furnaces are the ability to add modules and lowers pollution and you can if you so wish add modules to lower power consumption at the cost of production speed. My output tracks are always backlogged like everyone elses so in essence the only furnaces that are doing anything are the last few.

[KatherineOfSky]

Originally posted by Cavalier Roy:

My output tracks are always backlogged like everyone elses so in essence the only furnaces that are doing anything are the last few.

Well, the only thing to do -- build more rockets!!!! :-)

All kidding aside, it would be nice if the steel furnaces recycled into the electric ones. However, it seems like the devs thought of them as small-peanuts items... like the burner mining drills & inserters.... use them and then dump them. There are quite a few items that don't recycle into others, like wooden power poles, etc.

Perhaps its' one of the devs' "coming of age" markers in the game. Personally, I never build huge arrays of smelters until I get electric furnaces -- I never need to throw away more than 140 steel furnaces or so.

Of course, most of the time, I can't be bothered... I just go straight from Stone Furnaces to Electric, and rebuild my smelting lines while I am at it. (I use a line that auto-compresses itself -- LOTs of splitters and undergrounds).

[Cavalier Roy]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

Originally posted by Cavalier Roy:

My output tracks are always backlogged like everyone elses so in essence the only furnaces that are doing anything are the last few.

Well, the only thing to do -- build more rockets!!!! :-)

All kidding aside, it would be nice if the steel furnaces recycled into the electric ones. However, it seems like the devs thought of them as small-peanuts items... like the burner mining drills & inserters.... use them and then dump them. There are quite a few items that don't recycle into others, like wooden power poles, etc.

Perhaps its' one of the devs' "coming of age" markers in the game. Personally, I never build huge arrays of smelters until I get electric furnaces -- I never need to throw away more than 140 steel furnaces or so.

Of course, most of the time, I can't be bothered... I just go straight from Stone Furnaces to Electric, and rebuild my smelting lines while I am at it. (I use a line that auto-compresses itself -- LOTs of splitters and undergrounds).

Maybe it is a coming of age thing, personally i don't build many burners drills for the same reason as steel furnaces. I like to play on maps with resource frequency set to very low, so wasting resources isn't something i like to do. The basic ammo i limit to 2 slots in an output chest because they are not used in the armour piercing rounds recipe so again a waste of material once your begin producing those armoured piercing rounds.

Like you i like my tracks highly compressed so i only use red belts to clear the furnace output track, corners and at merge points other than that i don't use red belts. I use red splitters and sometimes red underground belts but i mostly use the basic belts to keep compression high. To be honest the only place i use red or blue belts in large qauntities is around the walls for defensive reasons (just in side of the turrets arc so spliters don't get to mass fire at my turrets).

[Ozone]

The steel furnaces are more energy and size efficient than the Electric furnaces (without modules). The electric furnaces are only interesting if you can add modules to them.

[Zaphod]

Yeah, and once you have the power capacity to be able to run electric furnaces. There is, for me anyway, a long period before i get solar up and runnin' , where steel furnaces are the key to speedin' up production.

[Warlord]

I can't believe this. Steel furnaces have double the smelting speed of normal stone furnaces, equivalent to electric. It is an EXCELLENT upgrade from stone, and definitely worth the paltry steel/stone investment to build a few dozen. If they are trashed later, who cares?

I do think that it'd be nice if they can be incorporated into an upgrade plan (like being able to upgrade into electric), but I'm not too bothered. The pistol and first shotgun are worthless after you can make the new stuff. Same with ammo. I'd HATE it if to make armor piercing rounds you had to make a normal round first.

[ArtyD42]

Originally posted by OzoneGrif:

The steel furnaces are more energy and size efficient than the Electric furnaces (without modules). The electric furnaces are only interesting if you can add modules to them.

I happen to enjoy the electric ones massively lower pollution factor when tied into solar powering it. Microbases with solar power core and main power defensive connection can be made this way.

[T-Bone Biggins]

Originally posted by Warlord:

I can't believe this. Steel furnaces have double the smelting speed of normal stone furnaces, equivalent to electric. It is an EXCELLENT upgrade from stone, and definitely worth the paltry steel/stone investment to build a few dozen. If they are trashed later, who cares?

I do think that it'd be nice if they can be incorporated into an upgrade plan (like being able to upgrade into electric), but I'm not too bothered. The pistol and first shotgun are worthless after you can make the new stuff. Same with ammo. I'd HATE it if to make armor piercing rounds you had to make a normal round first.

The same smelting speed is exactly why I tend to take a long time to work up to the larger electric furnaces, as soon as I get steel furnaces I tend to make a mid-sized smelting facility that can work for a long time before needing to be replaced. I mean yeah sure you need a coal line but that's not too hard to do.