Thoughts on the Caterium Wire?

[kLuns]

I've started a new save and hunted for a lot of alternative recipes. When I look in guides and videos for well used alternative recipes I never meet the Caterium Wire recipe. The reason I like it very much is that you can save a lot of resources with it and in early game it requires only one machine to get a full belt.

Do you like to use this recipe or is there a downside when making higher production?
Is it still useable in a megafactory? Or does the demand of Quickwire/ AI Limiters get the priority?

As far as I could find I saw this would be the most resource saving recipe combined with Stitched Iron Plate. Saving resources is imo much more important than faster production at the same clock speed. The Copper Rotor does both, need to underclock untill the mk3 belt comes around.

I saw there is a little bit more than 10k caterium and near 28k copper total which means for small factories to make the unlocks available the only question will be if you find a caterium node close enough.

Fortunally I started this new save in the Rocky Desert near the only Pure Copper Node this biome has and Pure Caterium is around the corner there.

I saw adding water is magic for items as well so I cant wait to unlock the refinery and get cooking pure ingots and steamed copper sheets.

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Wire

[XistenZ]

I also think this recipe gets overlooked, to me it's so obviously superior especially if you also unlock pure caterium.
The amount of wire you get per resource is very satisfactory

[Vectorspace]

My preferred combo is Fused Wire and Fused Quickwire - both made from copper and caterium.
If you use both you can make more wire and quickfire from the same amounts of ore, compared to the regular wire and quickfire recipes.
Though I admit I have not tried Caterium Wire

[Wolfgang]

I think the reason is pretty much what you said: Caterium is a rarer resource than Copper. You can do it but when you get to the later game stuff Caterium is a valuable resource that you might not want to spend on something like Wire.
It is like the Iron Alloy Ingot which is using Copper to increase the Iron production even though Copper is a rarer resource than Iron.
But it certainly lends itself to be used early game if you are able to tap into it and you don't need any of the mid to later game Caterium stuff.

Do I use it? No, as for one I don't have this recipe and for two I have found enough copper nodes that, even if I had the recipe, would make it pretty useless as I have currently only two pure Caterium nodes but about 12 Copper nodes of varying purity.

[HuMaNgUtAn]

It all depends on your play-style. Any of the recipes that use rarer, more precious resources to make lower tier products are generally thought of as wasteful, but they can be very convenient.

If you are the type who likes to maximise production and tap every node in the world then you wont use them.

If you are the type that builds for maximum simplicity, with isolated production centres and minimal logistics then they can be ideal.

For example with this recipe, caterium computers an alt circuit boards recipe - you could make a computer and high speed connector factory making everything from scratch without having to use copper or iron, just oil and caterium.

[kLuns]

Thanks for the heads up :)

Publicado originalmente por Vectorspace:

My preferred combo is Fused Wire and Fused Quickwire - both made from copper and caterium.
If you use both you can make more wire and quickfire from the same amounts of ore, compared to the regular wire and quickfire recipes.
Though I admit I have not tried Caterium Wire

If I compare the recipes here
https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Caterium_Ingot
I see your combination gets a total throughput for
10,5 Caterium Ingot in
59,5 Coper Ingot in.

Output 90 Wire, 90 Quickwire

The combination I try has a total throughput for
27 Caterium Ingots in,
120 Wire and 60 Quickwire comes out

By the time the nodes get rare the copper can fill a gap, but before the logistics or caterium run out you get more resource per ore, especially when you use the pure ingot alternative recipe.

Publicado originalmente por Wolfgang:

I think the reason is pretty much what you said: Caterium is a rarer resource than Copper. You can do it but when you get to the later game stuff Caterium is a valuable resource that you might not want to spend on something like Wire.

How rare is caterium if you can make over 1250 Quickwire and AI Limiters per minute, and in addition over 1250 Wire and cable per minute with this recipe?
By the time you need such quantities you got either organisation for a drone or for a train.
Im not convinced that Caterium is rare yet or too rare, not to optimize or not worth organising logistics for.

Publicado originalmente por HuMaNgUtAn:

If you are the type who likes to maximise production and tap every node in the world then you wont use them.

If you want to maximize production you need to get the lowest base costs per item. Basicly, you get the most items per resource in this way.
The price of the base costs needs also the most available resource in it's calculation to be accurate.

[PhailRaptor]

Publicado originalmente por kLuns:

Publicado originalmente por HuMaNgUtAn:

If you are the type who likes to maximise production and tap every node in the world then you wont use them.

If you want to maximize production you need to get the lowest base costs per item. Basicly, you get the most items per resource in this way.
The price of the base costs needs also the most available resource in it's calculation to be accurate.

While generally true, this runs into issues when transferred from the pure math to the practicality of actually setting it up. Many of the more resource efficient recipes have long processing times, requiring you to run the process many many times in parallel to keep the throughput high. This costs you space, materials to construct, and power to run. Depending on the scale involved, you will have to divert more and more logistics and power to making the power to run everything, and to continue expanding the logistics itself to accommodate everything that needs to be moved in order to keep it all running.

Case and point, one of the most sought after early game recipes is Cast Iron Screws, because it eliminates Iron Rods from the production of Screws. This eliminates a series of machines from the process, which saves you power at a stage you can't afford to waste it, and generally simplifies your production chain.

Somewhere in the midgame this reverses, where most people do anything and everything they can to eliminate Screws from their production chains completely through alternate recipes. The logistics of crafting and transporting screws to run various processes is just too aggravating and makes any factory requiring them significantly more complicated. So Stitched Iron Plate (Wire instead), Steeled Modular Frame (Steel Pipes instead), Steel Rotors (completely different recipe), Heavy Encased Frame (Concrete (!!) instead), and Caterium Computers (Drop Screws entirely) become much more desirable.

[XistenZ]

Publicado originalmente por PhailRaptor:

Publicado originalmente por kLuns:

If you want to maximize production you need to get the lowest base costs per item. Basicly, you get the most items per resource in this way.
The price of the base costs needs also the most available resource in it's calculation to be accurate.

While generally true, this runs into issues when transferred from the pure math to the practicality of actually setting it up. Many of the more resource efficient recipes have long processing times, requiring you to run the process many many times in parallel to keep the throughput high. This costs you space, materials to construct, and power to run. Depending on the scale involved, you will have to divert more and more logistics and power to making the power to run everything, and to continue expanding the logistics itself to accommodate everything that needs to be moved in order to keep it all running.

If one tries to maximize everything, the amount of production buildings is irrelevant. Building space is practically infinite and the resources needed to build them is also irrelevant, not just theoretically but practically infinite.
When it comes to power, very little resources (comparably to anything else) is needed to set up a nuclear plant along with sufficient buildings for waste management.

Tl;dr
When maxing out all the nodes in the game, efficient recipes along with no build limit is the shizzle