Compacted coal does... What?

[Azirahael]

So, you can add sulphur to coal to give it more total power.
But, it burns at the same rate, it just burns longer.
So, you can not waste your time, and just pump more coal into the generator.

Therefore, there's no use to it.
Unless i'm missing something.

[IPWIW]

turbo fuel(another alt)
there's limited nodes,thus limited resources,"just put in more coal/fuel" just means "you're not using all the coal/fuel for now"

[Azirahael]

Originally posted by IPWIW:

turbo fuel(another alt)
there's limited nodes,thus limited resources,"just put in more coal" is just "you're not using all the coal"

Don't need all the coal. Got fuel generators, geothermal plants and so on.
And what you described, is useless.
Putting in compacted coal, will not help. Because it does not burn at a higher level, it just burns longer.
So you don't get more power.
And turbo fuel suffers from the same problem. The only difference is: a full stack of turbo fuel will save you refuelling the truck as often. Ooo.

Now if compacted coal and turbo fuel burned the same length of time, but put out double the power, that would actually be worth it.

[IPWIW]

Originally posted by Azirahael:

double the power

yeah unfortunately that's not how to works
https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/bl6slp/turbo_fuel_versus_regular_fuel_what_you_need_to/
personally i can't be bothered to build a >3200MW(all 16 geothermal) factory without persistent production goal,so no generator in my base yet

[Azirahael]

So it's useful if you can't get enough oil or coal.
I don't have that problem.

[piddlefoot]

See I cant get enough coal, I have 3 nodes running conveyors back to base, and its all flying in on Mk4 belts at break neck speed, and still my machines stop and start cos I cant feed them enough coal, yes my spaghetti factory is pretty huge now, still at 40 FPS, pretty amazing really for an EA game !

I also have power lines running from thermal power right across map to base, my map is so messy, its just crazy that the game even runs still !

When I start FRAPS to record, man frame rate gets smashed to 5 FPS and then pops back up to 35, doesnt like starting new files through FRAPS at all.

Does anyone know of a recorder that works really well with Unreal Engine ?
Or is there one designed specifically for Unreal Engine ?

[JJ2078]

So... While each individual unit doesn't give any more power, they do burn longer (or take longer to burn), which means that you are able to fuel more coal generators with the same rate of fuel... For example, if you have 120/min coal (plus water) you can power 8 coal generators giving you 600MW but with 120/min Compacted Coal (plus water), you can now power 16.8 coal generators, giving you 1260MW overall, minus a cost of 141.624MW for the 10 assemblers (9@100%+1@60%) to give you a net increase of 518.376MW which is more power... You still get 75MW per coal generator no matter what you fuel it with.. The variable is how many generators you can fuel at the same rate.
1 pure sulfur node + 1 pure coal node, a MK1 Miner on each, and Mk2 belts and you've got yourself 1260MW of power pretty early on.. All you need to do is make sure each generator gets its 45m3/min each and you're golden. (Mk1 Pipes can hold 300m3/min, giving you enough water for 6 generators and a little to spare)

More Generators = More Power.

Sure you can just run 240/min coal in to 16 generators to make the same power output, but now you have a free node for steel or something else...
Remember, the whole idea of the game is efficiency. The most output from the least input.

[Jimmy]

I started to use the diluted fuel alt (blender) and just use oil and water for around 20.000MW off of a fully overclocked pure oil node. Coal is exclusively used for steel production. And there is the compacted steel ingot alt, that (even if slower) makes a lot more out of your available coal and iron, if you have some sulfur to pepper in.

[Vectorspace]

In my update 3 factory I used it to make turbofuel for power. But with update 4's new blender recipes I used petroleum coke instead.
In my new save where I have not reached oil yet, I'm only using it to power my explorer.
There is an alt recipe for black powder that uses compacted coal, that overall uses less sulfur and less coal than the vanilla recipe

[Mister Fabulous]

This is a pretty old thread, but the same still applies. In a mental gymnastics way they were right, but for the wrong reasons. Yes you get more power from compacted coal per unit because you can run more generators which they missed the point on, but when you take into account the power needed to mine and make the compacted coal you pretty much break even when it comes to power produced per unit of coal mined.

Turbofuel is very different of course and you get way more out than the base components that can provide power.

[DrNewcenstein]

Originally posted by Mister Fabulous:

This is a pretty old thread, but the same still applies. In a mental gymnastics way they were right, but for the wrong reasons. Yes you get more power from compacted coal per unit because you can run more generators which they missed the point on, but when you take into account the power needed to mine and make the compacted coal you pretty much break even when it comes to power produced per unit of coal mined.

Turbofuel is very different of course and you get way more out than the base components that can provide power.

This is the inherent issue with most alt recipes: no one considers the extra power needed to run the extra machines, or resources to build them which could go for other machines, or the same machine building something else.

With coal, you need a single miner. With compacted coal, you need to divert coal and sulfur (now using 2 miners) from black powder production into another assembler, which requires power. You also add more time to the mix, which means supply issues for the coal generators.

The power issues go away only when you're running compacted coal gens in addition to fuel gens, because now you have more power to make up the shortfall. It's backtracking, somewhat, which is typically not how the progression works for production aspects.

The Electrode circuit boards alt recipe is one of the few that is actually an inline solution: make rubber and petroleum coke from a single node, you get a circuit board. However, the Caterium circuit board (plastic and caterium) is the better recipe because you get 7 in one go.
Iron Wire + Stitched Iron Plate alts are the others I can think off off the top of my head: a single node can be split to make Reinforced (Stitched) Iron Plate in one continuous flow. You're running the constructors and assembler anyway to make something from that node, and you need those plates.

[umop-apisdn]

All of the alternative recipes have their situational uses; some are faster production, some use fewer and/or less resources, some use less power, some have smaller footprints...

It all depends on your current situation whether a given alternative recipe is "useful" to you; I've even used biocoal to rush to oil in a playthrough where I discovered too late that I had built my "starter factory" in pretty much the farthest place I could get from the nearest coal nodes (literally 1200m from the nearest nodes... but I had oil just a few hundred meters away on the other side of a small bay, and there was plenty of local fauna to make biomass from.

[T-Bone Biggins]

Compacted coal is mostly useful around tier 4. It's a way to cut coal with sulfur so you can double your potential power from a coal vein, or use half the coal to make the same amount of power and still have half the coal left for making steel etc. but this comes obviously at the expense of sulfur. At mid-tier the sulfur is only used for gunpowder and you only need a single vein to make all that you need, so compacted coal is a good way to get a larger energy grid going early on so you can focus on other stuff later. Once better alt recipes are found, you have a larger part of the map tamed with more access to more nodes, and when you get better technology available you can dismantle your old coal/compacted coal generators and put the coal and sulfur towards more useful materials production.

[David 001]

Originally posted by T-Bone Biggins:

Compacted coal is mostly useful around tier 4. It's a way to cut coal with sulfur so you can double your potential power from a coal vein, or use half the coal to make the same amount of power and still have half the coal left for making steel etc. but this comes obviously at the expense of sulfur. At mid-tier the sulfur is only used for gunpowder and you only need a single vein to make all that you need, so compacted coal is a good way to get a larger energy grid going early on so you can focus on other stuff later. Once better alt recipes are found, you have a larger part of the map tamed with more access to more nodes, and when you get better technology available you can dismantle your old coal/compacted coal generators and put the coal and sulfur towards more useful materials production.

Yeah and if you start in the dune desert you get spoiled with a, no 2 PURE NODES OF SULFUR!!! Plus compacted coal is good for explorer fuel.

[MadDEMENT0R]

work input / work output = efficency;

Originally posted by Azirahael:

So, you can add sulphur to coal to give it more total power.
But, it burns at the same rate, it just burns longer.
So, you can not waste your time, and just pump more coal into the generator.

Therefore, there's no use to it.
Unless i'm missing something.

coal can also be fuel for tractrors.
compacted coal too.

sulphur and coal also make black powder.

so black powder and compacted coal make a good output that can be done at the same factory...

[MadDEMENT0R]

Originally posted by DrNewcenstein:

Originally posted by Mister Fabulous:

[...]
With coal, you need a single miner. With compacted coal, you need to divert coal and sulfur (now using 2 miners) from black powder production into another assembler, which requires power. You also add more time to the mix, which means supply issues for the coal generators. [...]

But if you're going to make blackpowder then you have those miners running already.